Anna Hoyt holds a plaque given to her by Jakob Kolodynski on behalf of the Mission Tandale Foundation in Poland thanking her for supporting their humanitarian efforts for Ukrainians. Hoyt said her name is on the award but it really belongs to everyone who donated thousands of dollars for her to bring overseas. She is returning to Poland again later this month with more aid for Ukraine. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — For the fifth time since the war between Russia and Ukraine began, Anna Hoyt will be traveling to see family in Poland with cash donations from the Tri-Lakes to help Ukrainians who are living in warzones and trying to put their lives back together.

Hoyt, a native of Poland living in Saranac Lake, said she thinks often about her home country’s neighbor to the southeast, which was invaded by Russia 18 months ago in a war that has killed an estimated 9,000 civilians, more than 17,000 Ukrainian soldiers and an approximate 40,000 Russian soldiers.

The war has also upended the lives of millions of refugees.

Hoyt is going to Poland again at the end of August for her niece’s wedding. A GoFundMe fundraiser for her donation efforts has been set up by Saranac Lake resident Dan Reilly at bit.ly/3o3aa7C.

“The need is there. It’s not going away,” Hoyt said.

The need is very different now than last year. Last July, the nearly $10,000 in cash she carried across the ocean in a secret pocket was pretty much all used for food, clothing and essential goods packed into vans and driven into Ukraine. Now, Hoyt says the charitable groups bringing these supplies into Ukraine have filled storehouses with those goods thanks to organizations around the world sending aid.

Despite this abundance, when she met with Jakob Kolodynski with the Mission Tandale Foundation (Fundacja Misja Tandale in Polish) in April, he told her they thought they might have to stop their monthly deliveries into Ukraine. They didn’t have enough money for gas.

“His voice just cracked,” Hoyt said.

The price per gallon of fuel in Poland has been close to $7 to $9 USD, and he told her it costs around $700 per van to drive to Ukraine round trip. At the time, she brought enough money for three full trips.

It’s less exciting bringing money for gasoline, but Hoyt said it’s just as important. It doesn’t do anyone good to have those supplies sitting in Poland.

The people of Poland have done a lot for Ukrainians fleeing or living in the war, but Hoyt said there is an “exhaustion” in the country and fewer people are still doing volunteer work. Still, once a month, Kolodynski and his wife Gosia drive their two vans across the border, where they meet with convoys of others to travel more safely in numbers. Once deep in Ukraine, “way past Kiev,” they break off and travel to small towns where the help is needed.

Though there are millions of dollars in donations pouring into the country, Kolodynski told Hoyt most of that does not trickle down to the people living on the eastern front war zone.

“There are still villages where people are asking for the basics, like salt, flour and sugar, so they can make the basic bread just to survive,” Hoyt said.

She said it does not matter how much someone gives — it all counts.

“If many, many people give that $5, the end results are amazing,” Hoyt said.

In April, Kolodynski gave Hoyt a plaque thanking her for supporting their humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Mission Tandale Foundation. Her name is on the award but Hoyt said it really belongs to everyone who donated.

Some of the goods the Kolodynskis bring to Ukraine are for the soldiers. For months, people on the front lines have been putting menstrual pads in their boots to keep their feet dry in the trenches. Recently, she said, they’ve switched to using absorbent meat packaging pads.

“A hundred years after the Great War and men in trenches are fighting the same war of trying to keep their feet dry,” Hoyt said.

It is “mind-blowing” to her that with all the technological advancements in the past century, in the trench, it is the same as it ever was.

She has no idea how long this war will go on. Thinking about it, she takes a deep breath and looks down.

“It is incredibly expensive, life-wise and equipment-wise. And every yard is hard to get,” she said.

Ukraine is on a counteroffensive currently, trying to take back land occupied by Russian forces. This week, two Ukrainian drones have bombed a building in central Moscow, and several others have been intercepted. There have been no reports of injuries or deaths from these attacks.

On the western end of the country, away from the Russian border, Hoyt said people are living normal lives. As normal as they can be in areas that still have missiles killing and injuring civilians. She said Ukrainians are thinking about rebuilding already.

Life was destabilized for all Ukrainians.

There are still approximately 1.4 million refugees living in Poland. Hoyt knows a lot about four of them — four siblings — because they were taken in by friends of her brother in March of 2022.

“Saints,” she said of the couple, Irmina and Jerzy Sterniccy, who took in Katia, Kostia, Liza and Ania, who at the time were 13, 15, 17 and 28, respectively.

The siblings left Kiev because Ania needed a kidney replacement. Her kidneys stopped working when she was 17 and if she didn’t get seven-hour dialysis treatments three times a week, she could die.

On Christmas morning, she had what Hoyt called a “miracle” with a sudden kidney transplant. But a couple months later, something went wrong. Hoyt said Ania’s body accepted the kidneys, but her immune system was attacking it.

After months in the hospital, doctors replaced her circulatory system with a series of blood transfusions. It was a difficult time for her.

“Here, she got new life, and suddenly she was in the hospital for another two months,” Hoyt said.

She got out of the hospital in May.

Hoyt said Liza wants to be actress. Katia has adapted to Poland very well, so well, in fact, that when she got her school final in Ukrainian she was mad that they didn’t give it to her in Polish.

Kostia has struggled to adapt, she said. Eventually, his mother, a paramedic in Kiev, came and brought him to a family friend in Germany in May.

“It’s not all roses,” Hoyt said. “It’s life.”

On Aug. 14, the St. Agnes Catholic Church in Lake Placid is holding a concert with donations to benefit Ukraine at 7 p.m. Rev. John Yonkovig said the money from this concert will be given to Hoyt, as well as a group of Dominican Friars who run an orphanage in Kiev.