Ukraine War Gives Freight Firm a New Purpose: ‘I’m Fighting This Way’

PORT READING, N.J. — A blue dot on a field means nonperishable meals, prepared for delivery. A pink dot means first-aid objects for hospitals nonetheless standing. A inexperienced dot means provides for Ukrainians taking over arms: boots and kneepads, socks and gloves, thermal underwear and camouflage-patterned clothes.

And on this cavernous warehouse, on the again finish of an industrial park in central New Jersey, inexperienced dots are all over the place — emerald indicators that Ukrainian Individuals stand behind Ukrainian civilians who’re defending their homeland with their lives.

Simply three weeks in the past, the warehouse hummed with the enterprise of Meest-America Inc., a freight-delivery service that focuses on delivery items to Ukraine and different Japanese European international locations, together with Russia. “Meest” is Ukrainian for bridge.

However on Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, the native nation for many of Meest-America’s 108 staff, and enterprise all however stopped. The corporate was unable to ship to Ukraine, and it couldn’t in good conscience proceed delivery to Russia and Belarus.

“As soon as we noticed the photographs of bombing, it was a simple determination,” stated Natalia Brandafi, the corporate’s chief working officer.

In a single day, the New Jersey warehouse grew to become a Ukrainian outpost. The foyer was embellished with a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, and the cellphone system modified to play the Ukrainian nationwide anthem for callers on maintain. Your complete enterprise mannequin was modified to a single function:

Assist Ukraine.

As uncooked pictures and stories of battle’s life-shattering toll unfold on-line, Ukrainian American organizations pleaded for donations to assist the wounded and displaced. However additionally they sought support for many who had been setting apart pens and shovels to select up weapons. The response, organizers stated, has been overwhelming.

A glimpse might be discovered within the modest basement of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Holy Ascension in Maplewood, the place the wintry backdrop of the Christmas pageant nonetheless adorns the small stage. Bins of donated objects coated the tiled flooring, and handwritten indicators of group — “diapers + child care” — had been taped to the wood-paneled partitions.

However the desired “precedence objects” listed on a church leaflet extra straight mirrored the carnage of battle. Belly bandages. Water-gel burn dressing. IV starter kits. Emergency compression dressings that stem the bleeding from hemorrhagic wounds.

On Wednesday afternoon, Dan and Lynne Gulak, married retirees and church members who had been volunteering for the reason that outbreak of battle, had been taping and labeling packing containers within the basement when the phone rang. It was the Maplewood Fireplace Division.

Mr. Gulak listened to the caller, stated that phrases couldn’t categorical his thanks, hung up — and briefly misplaced his composure. Eradicating his glasses to wipe his eyes with a handkerchief, he defined in a quavering voice that the division could be dropping off a number of dozen packing containers of medical provides. It had additionally collected $5,000 in donations, and extra money was coming.

As he spoke, the pink of Engine 32 and the white of a pickup truck, each filled with packing containers, flashed previous the excessive basement window. A fireplace official referred to as to say that the supply was right here.

“Be proper up,” Mr. Gulak stated, voice breaking as soon as once more.

Many donations just like the one delivered to the church in Maplewood are being trucked to Meest-America’s huge warehouse, the place proof of the corporate’s interrupted enterprise might be seen in a single nook of the 92,000-square-foot house. There, on row after row, sat hundreds of packages whose supply to Japanese Europe had been halted by battle: books, garments and home items, many in Amazon and Goal and Walmart packing containers.

Amongst them was a field containing a hedge trimmer, evoking dashed hopes of peaceable gardening within the Ukrainian spring.

Deeper into the constructing, Meest-America staff, dwarfed by towers of boxed donations, had stayed hours after their day shifts to affix the volunteers who had been unpacking, inspecting, sorting and repacking the fabric coming in.

Lesya Tenderyak, who works in accounts payable, paused to clarify why she had been sorting and packing seven days every week. She stated she comes from Chervonohrad, in western Ukraine. She stated she has household there. She stated she would take up arms if she might.

“I’m combating this manner,” Ms. Tenderyak stated.

No music as folks work; no chitchat. Simply the chirp of forklifts, the rattle of pallet lifts, the thump of field upon field.

A few of the donations coming in, objects typically requiring particular paperwork for cargo, assist to clarify the intense temper: civilian drones, satellite tv for pc telephones, walkie-talkies.

The somberness deepened a number of days in the past when a volunteer obtained a cellphone name. Information from the town of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine: Her nephew, who had joined a civilian protection unit, had been killed.

“She collapsed in her chair, crying,” Ms. Brandafi stated of the volunteer, whom she has identified for years. “And she or he saved crying.”

Such scenes have unfolded whereas some Russian clients have been calling to berate and complain, resulting in raised voices on the reception desk. “They yell at our workers and blame the battle on Ukrainians,” she stated.

Ms. Brandafi, 51, exuded exhaustion as she sat in her warehouse workplace late Wednesday afternoon. On a desk, her lunch of tomato soup was rising chilly in its unopened bag. On the wall, a portray of a moonlit avenue evoked small-town calm.

It typically appeared that the times of routine phone calls had been over. One second, a Boston tech investor was calling to donate $70,000 for delivery prices; the subsequent, a longtime buyer in japanese Ukraine was weeping in panic.

“Heartbreaking,” Ms. Brandafi stated.

She doesn’t cry till after she has left the workplace at 10, pushed the half-hour residence and sat down to observe the newest information from her homeland. Then she might cry. However not at work; there’s no time.

Final week, she stated, 120 tons of provides within the warehouse had been flown to western Europe and pushed into Ukraine by company-owned vehicles. And with extra donations pouring in day by day, the corporate is working with a number of nonprofit organizations — together with Razom, NovaUkraine and Revived Troopers Ukraine — to ship as a lot as attainable as quickly as attainable.

“It may be overwhelming,” Ms. Brandafi acknowledged, as her cellphone rang and her chilly soup sat untouched.

However that street-scene portray on her wall is of Rohatyn, her hometown in western Ukraine, which helps to clarify why, on the opposite facet of that wall, one other truck was pulling right into a bay, and extra dots — blue, pink and inexperienced — had been being utilized to wrapped bundles.

“These are the streets we used to stroll on,” she stated.