At five each morning, once martial law restrictions are lifted, Oleksandr Dovhal leaves Dnipro and heads to the most dangerous areas of the front to rescue civilians. The day we meet, he and other members of Dobra Sprava, a nonprofit, are focused on bringing people to safety from Pokrovsk and the surrounding area.
In Dnipro, Alina Holovko fields daily calls from desperate residents. She compiles lists of those in need, including addresses and contact details, and sends them to Oleksandr. She says Dobra Sprava has evacuated more than 40,000 civilians since the full-scale invasion 32 months ago.
As they rush to the front, Oleksandr and his team face constant danger from Russian shelling and drones. Military checkpoints recognize their van and allow it to pass without stopping, and evacuees are instructed to gather at specific meeting points at exact times to reduce exposure to Moscow’s guns.
Oleksandr particularly stresses the importance of punctuality, remembering a tragic incident in Bakhmut in 2022 when civilians gathered early and were killed by shelling. His tight schedule is crucial to their safety.
“My nerves can’t take it anymore. May God not allow anyone else to experience this,” says an elderly woman as she is whisked away from her home and the relentless Russian attacks. “A big thank you to America for helping us with military aid. Without America, I don’t know what would happen.”
Residents say the nights are worst when Russian shelling is at its most intense. In Myrnohrad, an elderly woman who is unable to leave because of her health weeps as she watches her neighbors board the evacuation van. Tears stream down her face as she watches her friends and neighbors drive away, possibly for the last time.
An elderly man who is also staying behind cycles to the evacuation point and tells me he will become a partisan when the invaders reach the settlement. “I’ll use whatever I can get my hands on to fight the Russians when they come,” he says.
As we arrive at another settlement, waiting for civilians to gather at the rally point for evacuation, the morning’s Russian strikes are clearly visible. Volunteers urge me to document what has happened but warn of the danger of double tap strikes — where an initial shelling is followed by another a few minutes later to kill and wound rescuers. It’s a common tactic in Russia’s war in Syria and is now widely used by Ukraine’s invaders.
Oleksandr says he was once driving with his co-driver, Vyacheslav Petrikeev, to evacuate civilians from Selydove when the van was hit by Russian mortar shelling. As they began to run for cover, they saw a Russian lancet drone hit and destroy the van.
“I didn’t even think about the possibility of dying. The whole time, I was planning how we would escape that hell,” says Oleksandr. For more than 12 hours they hid while the Russians used around 50 mortar rounds to try to kill them, according to Ukrainian reconnaissance pilots who were watching a live drone feed.
“We remained unharmed, maybe a slight concussion because my ears rang for almost a day,” Oleksandr says. “We lost the bus and our personal belongings, but they used significantly more resources on us.”
As the shelling drew closer, they had no choice but to make a run for it across the open terrain, despite the swarm of drones overhead, he says. They managed to break through and reach Ukrainian lines. Once there, soldiers provided them with water and helped notify their families they were still alive.
“Everyone was looking for us: volunteers, police, SBU, and the military’s aerial reconnaissance working in the area,” Oleksandr says. “They said they had been monitoring the situation from the air and we had almost no chance of survival.” At the beginning of the war, he added: “They didn’t give Ukraine a chance to hold out either, but they were wrong.”
Now that the group has lost its primary evacuation vehicle, and with a growing backlog of people calling to be rescued from Russian attacks, Dobra Sprava is fundraising to buy a replacement.
And the threats to the nonprofit’s work are not just from Moscow’s weapons and its own scarce resources. Earlier this year it was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign, which included false accusations that it was collaborating with Ukraine’s recruitment offices and driving men to checkpoints to be detained and drafted.
For a time the rumors, mostly spread on Ukrainian Telegram channels, cut the number of civilians seeking help. But when Russian forces rapidly advanced into Toretsk, the city’s military administration asked Dobra Sprava to assist with evacuations, and the calls resumed.
David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X @DVKirichenko.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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