WARSAW, Poland — In a recent cellphone video, Joseph Nichols documented his drive through Kharkiv in Northeast Ukraine.

What You Need To Know

  • Joseph Nichols, an American who has lived in Ukraine for the last eight years, recently fled to Poland with his wife

  • After Spectrum News met Nichols in Warsaw, he has since made several trips back to Ukraine to deliver supplies to those in need

  • Nichols said the need for a wide variety of supplies remains high

  • He’s raising money to set up makeshift schools in Western Ukraine

It’s one of a half dozen trips Nichols made into the war-torn country in recent weeks to deliver medical supplies.

“Once I got to go into Kyiv and the suburbs where we lived, it was surreal in a different way because it was destroyed,” Nichols told Spectrum News in an interview over Zoom on Thursday.

Spectrum News first met Nichols one month ago at a train station in Warsaw, Poland while following President Joe Biden on his trip to Europe.

Nichols is an American who had been living in Ukraine for eight years with his wife, who is from the country. But he was visiting the U.S. when Russia invaded.

It took him over a week to travel back to Ukraine and get his wife to safety in Warsaw, which has become a gateway for hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Ukrainian refugees.

Back in March, Nichols described the threat of missile strikes after he returned to their house in the suburbs of Kyiv, the capital city in Ukraine.

“It was one siren a day, then two sirens a day, then five. And the day I got back, there were seven,” Nichols told Spectrum News while standing in the Warsaw train station on March 25.

Days after they reached Poland, he started making trips back to help deliver aid, even though his own home had been destroyed.

“It was really hard to personalize,” Nichols said. “Like, oh, the neighbor's house or the friend's house, the mother of the friend's house — they’re gone.”

Nichols has been documenting his journey through photos, showing where missiles have hit, where troops are positioned and where food is being prepared to help those still around.

“We moved medical aid in, we moved people out. Was it planned? It was just, no, we have room, let's get going,” Nichols said.

He’s also started a GoFundMe page to raise money for schools supplies. He’s been helping set up makeshift schools in Western Ukraine, where so many families have relocated to because the threat of war is lower.

“Twelve teachers, 140 students, purchased 15 computers and three projectors so far,” Nichols said, reading off a list with his latest update.

His message to fellow Americans watching from afar is that the need for everything — from military aid to prescriptions — is great.

He and his wife will stay in Poland for now and he’ll continue making trips to help.

"No matter what is delivered right now, it’s not enough,” Nichols said.