When calls come from Ukraine looking for help, these 3 Newfoundland women pick up the phone

Anna Milingi recently woke up to a 4 a.m. call from Ukraine. A school-turned-shelter had been bombed and children were injured. Volunteers called Milingi, in St. John's, to help find anesthesia and medication.

Milingi and her friends Anna Moiseinko and Adilya Dragan have been collecting money and humanitarian aid — like diapers for orphanages, medical supplies for hospitals and binoculars for the Ukrainian military — and shipping them directly to Ukraine.

Within a few hours of that desperate phone call, the three had collected $2,500 and connected with a volunteer in Hungary who bought the medication and got it to the hospital in Ukraine a couple of days later.

Pointing to a photo on her phone of a young girl with her arm in a cast, Moiseinko tears up when she explains how overwhelming the community support is.

"We are the only connection between Ukraine and these people and they trusted us with their hard-earned money.… They trusted us with their finances so that girl could be in less pain," said Moiseinko.

Moiseinko wishes the money could be spent on "happy" things, but medical supplies are badly needed in the country, weeks into an invasion by Russian military forces.

"This is something that goes not towards something fun like crafts for the kids but it goes for something to stop the pain or stop the bleeding or replace the blood or replace the iron in their blood," said Moiseinko.

The group is looking for medical supplies, hygiene items, food and other donations to ship to Ukraine.

They're using their Facebook page, Humanitarian Aid Newfoundland to Ukraine, to keep organized and facilitate donations, which can be dropped off at Lakecrest Independent School in St. John's from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Milingi and Moiseinko both have immediate family and close friends in Ukraine — some who will soon be arriving in St. John's.

Milingi's best friend, who is a master's degree graduate, and her one-year-old son, and Moiseinko's sister, a physician, and her two children all fled the war. They've been washing their only two pairs of socks in a sink, sleeping on couches and standing in lineups to obtain travel documents ever since.

Both left their husbands behind in Ukraine.

"Can you imagine making a choice between your kid or your husband?" said Moiseinko.

"All men who stay behind will be called to war. They will be called to war and there's a very slight chance they'll come out alive so when you leave the country with your kid, you make a choice: it's your child that's going to live and not your husband."