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Dnipro, Italian chef assists refugees from Mariupol

2022-04-13T19:05:25.998Z


'I help them escape, the Russians shoot buses with civilians' (ANSA)  For forty days he has been driving around the neighborhoods of Dnipro in his black Jeep and on his seat he has lists of people, dates, places and products, arranging packages and looking for empty apartments, "but with the cell phone tracking turned off, you never know" . Nicola felt involved in the war from the very beginning, when from the first week he started cooking for the soldiers of the c


 For forty days he has been driving around the neighborhoods of Dnipro in his black Jeep and on his seat he has lists of people, dates, places and products, arranging packages and looking for empty apartments, "but with the cell phone tracking turned off, you never know" .

Nicola felt involved in the war from the very beginning, when from the first week he started cooking for the soldiers of the city: he is a

46-year-old chef from Bergamo who has lived permanently in Ukraine for three years with his wife Anna, who instead belongs to the place, and their nine-year-old daughter.

Now he is a handyman volunteer who coordinates humanitarian expeditions.

But it is almost like being on the front line, he says: "The Russian military is shooting at us. They have hit our vehicles several times with Kalashnikovs, even though we had white flags."

And it shows photos of windshields smashed by bullets, as well as the signs on the door and sides of a Daily.


"Here I started a business in the restaurant business and I never stopped - he says -. When the bombs started raining, I didn't think twice. You can't go away, you need to help this people, who remembers Italy thirty years ago: they are united people and despite stereotypes they are very affectionate ".

Nicola, who feels Ukrainian to all intents and purposes, sealed this adoption on his skin with the yellow and blue national flag tattoo that romantically comments: "It passes through the vein that leads to the heart".


In recent days, however, he has replaced feelings with concreteness and is more worried than usual.

"More and more people are arriving from Mariupol, Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donestk, Kherson and Mykolaiv, but here the situation could precipitate at any moment. The mayor of Dnipro begged people not to stop in this city again and to try to continue further, because it could be dangerous. Many, however, want to stay as close as possible to their homes ".


    In the city, where a few of his compatriots still lived until a few weeks ago, he is now the only Italian.


"I had started to get goods from our country, activating myself with associations, then as the trucks reached Lviv we unloaded goods - medicines, food, clothes - and people got on to go to Poland. Even now we organize buses and vans that they go to take evacuees fleeing Mariupol, including those who were in the theater that collapsed under the bombs ", he adds while proudly saying:" I did the count, so far with various organizations we have saved 27 thousand people ".


    Everyone calls him 'Nico the Italian', but with the volunteers he speaks Russian, a language he learned years ago.

He wakes up with the sound of sirens or bombs, then the phone calls and messages begin and he runs to the various centers to hear what is needed.

"There are hundreds of kilos of pasta but maybe there are no pots or those evacuees do not have a microwave, so I go to get the cans. I try to be efficient for what is needed at the moment and we also need to arrange people - he explains -. For this reason. I look for vacant apartments and I get blankets. Two hundred elderly people have just arrived, where do I put them in? In one of the centers where we have inflatable mattresses and beds.


    Organization is everything to be able to move forward in this war.

Here there are people who have escaped from missiles and rifles, with their lives in two shopping bags ". 


Source: ansa

All life articles on 2022-04-13

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