The city of chernivtsi, which i had never been to before. i didn t know anybody here. i started yes? i was going say you said you wanted to do something, and you ve done something is incredible. what you did is you started up a charity from nothing. it s called bird of light ukraine, right? and you ve done some incredible work. thank you so much. thank you. it all started as initiative. i just looked around, i talked to people, and i just started to collect, to buy food. i was going across the border to bucharest, and i would buy a bunch of food, just wholesale, not wholesale, sorry, retail, retail prices. i started to buy food, pamper, hygiene products, baby food which was in that moment very difficult to get here considering how many newcomers were coming, new refugees with little kids. so i started to come to bucharest buying it, coming back.
These trucks have just arrived here from northern italy, containing medical supplies and equipment donated by the italian government, coordinated by the european union. from here they are being loaded into ukrainian trucks and taken across the border to the city of chernivtsi. fora moment, it could almost be italy. less than an hour to the border. the colours of the ukrainian flag are everywhere. over the rolling plains, the foothills of the carpathians. the smoke rising here is just from burning straw. memories of peacetime. nick thorpe, bbc news, on the romania ukraine border. president biden s in brussels for talks on toughening sanctions against russia. samantha simmonds has more on that.