‘Never will I forget the horror’
The founder of a Cork-based humanitarian charity has described the unimaginable horrors witnessed with her own eyes in war-torn Ukraine having just returned from her latest harrowing aid mission.
Fiona Corcoran, founder of the Greater Chernobyl Cause, returned to Cork recently with a stark warning: that the world must not look away from the relentless destruction of innocent lives.
During her visit to Vyshneve, outside Kyiv, Ms Corcoran witnessed firsthand the devastating toll on residential neighbourhoods, where missile strikes have turned family homes, playgrounds, and local shopping hubs to ash.
“War is not an abstraction here,” warned Ms Corcoran. “It is a daily reality, pitiless, relentless and terrifying. I have walked these ravaged streets. I have cursed, cursed out loud, over and over again, the purposeful evil and barbaric brutality wrought upon innocent people.
“Never will I forget the horror of what I have seen,” she said.
Among the ruins of Vyshneve, Ms Corcoran met with survivors Lena and her husband Igor, whose home was destroyed in a night attack that claimed the life of Lena's mother. Escaping through a burning doorway with their 16 year old son, the family lost everything, including their family pets in the aftermath.
Moved by their plight, the Cork campaigner unfastened a silver cross from her neck to give to Lena, promising that the people of Ireland would not forget their suffering.
The destruction extended to key infrastructure, including the Kvadrat shopping centre, now a charred shell with its clock frozen at the moment of impact, and the historic Lukianivskyi Market, where traders now set up makeshift stalls amidst the rubble where their relatives recently perished.
“I talk to these market people – men and women who have lost not just their trade but their loved ones, killed in the very spaces they used to call home and work. One stallholder tells me, in tears, of his daughter and son-in-law who died in a bombardment before dawn, with no time even to scream,” recounted Ms Corcoran.
Chernobyl fallout
Her aid mission also reached Ivanhiv, located less than 60 kilometres from the Chernobyl nuclear site. Residents who survived the 1986 nuclear fallout, including elderly liquidators and women in their eighties, are now facing the physical and psychological trauma of fresh military aggression following a brutal 34-day occupation.
Healthcare facilities in the area are severely overstretched. The region’s sole inpatient facility contains just 30 beds to serve more than 6,000 elderly residents and 3,000 people living with disabilities.
Ms Corcoran said: “People were killed in their homes and on the streets. Some were captured, their fate unknown. Our most vulnerable, the elderly, had to endure weeks in freezing basements.”
While support from the Greater Chernobyl Cause has already provided specialist beds, medical aids, food supplies, and a crucial ambulance for emergency transfers to the capital, demands continue to grow.
The Cork charity is now leading a critical campaign to open a second inpatient care facility at the former Prybirsk District Hospital to house vulnerable individuals like Tetiana Bril, a bedridden evacuee, and 85 year old Olga Illienko, who lives isolated without basic care.
A sanctuary shattered
The mission concluded with tragic news from Father's House, a Kyiv sanctuary for vulnerable youth supported by the Greater Chernobyl Cause for nearly three decades. Staff confirmed the death of 22 year old former resident, Anya, who was killed alongside her uncle when the shelter they took refuge in caught fire during a missile barrage.
Ms Corcoran pledged that her organisation will continue fighting for Ukraine’s most vulnerable.
She said: “These are not numbers, they have names, faces, and stories that need to be told. The world cannot look away.
“I’m white hot with rage, at Putin, at his generals, at every coward who carries out these orders of destruction. I’m not scared of these monsters. But I am very afraid for the Ukrainians who get up each day in terror, not knowing if this day will be their last.”
To get involved and to find out more about the work of the Greater Chernobyl Cause, visit greaterchernobylcause.ie.