Former wrestler delivers charity's vans of aid to Ukraine

A former wrestler said it was "surreal" driving for 46 hours across Europe to deliver five vans packed with aid to people in Ukraine.

Jit Rakhra, whose Ukrainian wife is also a wrestler, helped set up the appeal on Tuesday by the Jet Singh Trust to collect donations.

The vans set off from Wombourne, Staffordshire on Friday and arrived in Poland over the weekend.

"Whatever we can do we are doing," Mr Rakhra said.

They made use of his wife's connections with the wrestling community in Ukraine to deliver the donations.

"There are a lot of wrestlers we know personally [in Ukraine] who have actually gone missing, that we have not heard of for five or six days," the 32-year-old said.

Mr Rakhra is a former Great Britain wrestler and will be the team leader for Team England Wrestling at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

He met his wife, Olympic wrestler Oksana Rakhra, when he lived in Ukraine for five years.

The group of 11 took turns driving so they could complete the journey in the shortest amount of time.

Their only hold-up was a flat tyre in Germany and Mr Rakhra said they saw plenty of Ukrainian colours along their journey.

"All the colours in Europe are blue and yellow, it is phenomenal, every country, the road signs, wall art is about Ukraine," he said.

His wife has family in Ukraine and the connection made it "quite personal" to work with the trust on the appeal.

"This aid will go a long way. The best we can do is just to give confidence to them and support," he added.

The trust was set up in memory of British wrestler, Wolverhampton-based Jatinder Singh Chatha, who was known to friends and family as "Jet" and died in 2016.

Having completed the trip to Poland, the charity said it had set up a fundraising page for £10,000 to continue helping people in Ukraine.

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