The Guildford man helping to save abandoned pets in Ukraine

A Guildford man who travelled to the Ukrainian border last week to provide help for refugees is now helping to save abandoned animals in the war-torn country. Nick Tadd, 55, is a property investor and photographer who filled his pick-up truck and a trailer with food, water and sanitary products from Booker Cash and Carry in Aldershot last Thursday (3 March). He then started the 21-hour, 1,200-mile drive across Europe to the border crossing at Medyka in Poland.

He arrived at his destination on Saturday morning and was heartbroken by what he saw. : Guildford man’s harrowing photos from frontline of Ukraine refugee crisis “It’s really upsetting,” he said. “Men aren’t allowed to cross [the border] but there are a lot of young mothers with children, and a lot of old people, and they literally don’t know what to do.”

Mr Tadd headed to the local school, which was serving as a drop-off point for supplies, but found there had been such generosity that there were actually more donated items than were needed in that area. This was because Poland, with help from other countries including France and Germany, had mobilised in recent days and bussed hundreds of thousands of refugees away from the border into other towns and cities, so there were fewer refugees stuck at the border than there had been a few days earlier. That being said, Tadd found that there is still a need for supplies inside Ukraine itself, and he had just started driving back to the UK after dropping off his items when he received a call from his wife Vanessa Warwick, who had been coordinating his trip from back in Surrey.

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There’s an ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom of every newsletter we send out. Vanessa had heard about an international charity called Network for Animals, which coordinates to rescue animals and was working in Ukraine. The charity had found that evacuees across the country were having to make the heartbreaking decision to leave their pets behind when fleeing their homes, after arriving at train stations and being told that their animals could not travel with them.

This has meant that many thousands of dogs, cats and others were being abandoned at stations, leading to a surge in admissions to sanctuaries where the staff were staying put to tend to the terrified pets. “They’re being utterly heroic,” Mr Tadd said of the staff at these sanctuaries. “They’re staying and looking after these animals.” Nick and Vanessa are animal lovers themselves, and own three Bengal cats who, in more normal times, travel everywhere with them in their motor home.

After being told of Network for Animals’ work, the couple began directing donations from a JustGiving page they had set up for his trip towards helping the charity’s efforts. Meanwhile, Mr Tadd scrapped his plans to return home. Instead he travelled to Dresden in Germany, where he used GBP2,000 of the money that they had raised to fill up the truck and trailer with bowls, leashes, cages, and animal food.

He then drove back to meet representatives from the charity at the border, and now plans to cross into Ukraine with them to deliver the goods to animal sanctuaries, before bringing as many animals as they can back across the border into Poland. The animals’ health will then be assessed, with medical attention provided for those who need it. Healthy animals will go into kennels and be looked after.

“Hopefully at some point they might be reunited with their owners,” said Mr Tadd. “That would be a wonderful thing.” Ultimately he would like to raise GBP20,000 to provide Network for Animals with an animal “ambulance” – a lorry that they can use to retrieve more abandoned animals from Ukraine. At the moment his plan is to stay until the end of the week, but he has said that if the charity needs him to stay beyond that to help then he will do so.

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