YORK, Pa. — Members of the York College Campus Safety team recently did their part to help those fighting in Ukraine by donating used bulletproof vests, the college said Thursday.
The donation was at the request of the FBI National Academy Class, which includes a police officer from Ukraine, according to the college.
The FBINA is organizing the collection of items to be shipped to Ukraine, the college said.
“This is probably the third different request for body armor donations I received in the last few weeks, said Ed Bruder, Director of Campus Safety Police and a 2002 York College alum. “With the FBI organizing the shipment to Poland, I thought that this request stood the best chance to get to Ukraine.”
Campus Safety donated eight complete sets of body armor, including various accessories, which typically retail at about $1,000 each, the college said.
"I hope they keep someone safe,” Bruder said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine is seeing “a buildup of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas, and we are preparing for that."
Meanwhile, a convoy of buses headed to Mariupol in another bid to evacuate people from the besieged port city after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. And a new round of talks aimed at stopping the fighting was scheduled for Friday.
The Red Cross said its teams were headed for Mariupol with medical supplies and other relief and hoped to take civilians out of the beleaguered city.
Tens of thousands have managed to get out of Mariupol in the past few weeks by way of humanitarian corridors, reducing its population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000 as of last week, but other efforts to relieve the city have been thwarted by continued Russian attacks.
Early this week, the Russians said they would significantly scale back operations in areas around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to increase trust between the two sides and help negotiations along.
But in the Kyiv suburbs, regional governor Oleksandr Palviuk said on social media that Russian forces shelled Irpin and Makariv and that there were battles around Hostomel.
