The rescuers drive shabby buses that are often shelled. They take directions by text messages directing them to bomb shelters. They make stops lasting only a few minutes and drive away as fast as possible, carrying as many scared residents out of the war zone as their vehicles will hold.
Escaping the war, however, is increasingly difficult amid the Russian-backed separatists’ renewed military offensive against Ukraine’s forces in the east. The Kremlin-supported fighters are also targeting vehicles carrying the civilians, volunteers say.
Natalia Voronkova, one of volunteers leading evacuation effort from Debaltseve and surrounding areas in Donetsk Oblast, said the vehicles for evacuation have become targets of Russian-backed separatists.
On Feb. 1, a shell hit a yellow bus for evacuation just in a minute after it stopped by bomb shelter in Debaltseve. Two drivers and two passengers were wounded because of it, including a 13-year-old girl, who received injuries of her neck.
“They definitely had a task to shell at people, who were waiting for us,” Voronkova remembers.
Eight more people were wounded by mortar shells, when they were queuing for evacuation by the building of the local administration on the same day. More than 20 people were killed in Debaltseve and its surroundings over the weekend, police in Donetsk Oblast reported.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated over the last week by joint efforts of volunteers, workers of state emergency service and by Donetsk regional authorities.
But Voronkova said there are hundreds more of those who want to leave but can’t. Voronkova said she has around 150 messages at her cell phone from people, who ask to take them away, but the volunteers can’t reach these areas as it’s too dangerous to travel there.
“There is a village of the Eighth of March, which is located in suburbs of Debaltseve, where even the cars for carrying dead bodies don’t come,” she said. “A bomb shelter has been bombed there, so people are hiding in the cellars.”
The official evacuation cars reach only Debaltseve and Avdiyivka, while volunteers also drive to Vuhlehirsk and Svitlodarsk.
So the residents of the Eighth of March, Chernuhine, Bulavinske, Olkhovatka and some other villages have to either stay or try to reach the evacuation points by themselves.
Many residents simply can’t reach the bomb shelters or local state officers where the evacuation services stop. Voronkova said that many people write her saying that they have little children, elderly parents or sick relatives, so they ask volunteers drive to their homes, which is not always possible.
“The most vulnerable people, including disabled, people on wheels, people after heart attacks are mostly left to their own,” she said.
Olga Filipska, a volunteer from Kharkiv-based support group who helps evacuating civilians from the east, agrees there are many people wait to be taken out of the shelled cities.
The volunteer admits they could have helped much more effectively, but they have only one old bus for a transportation. They mostly evacuate citizens to Kharkiv and a city of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv Oblast.
“We have taken some 20 people on Feb. 1 and at least 44 the day before from Debaltsevo,” Filipska says. “Today our bus will take another group from there,” she says, adding that their group receives hundreds of calls daily, but there is no chance to help everyone.
Olena Maliutina, a spokeswoman of Donetsk Oblast Administration, said just on Feb. 1 some 260 residents were evacuated from Debaltseve, with 156 people were saved by the official evacuation service and 20 by state emergency service.
But the volunteers complain that the state regional administration started evacuation too late and it still makes a big mistake by organizing the assembly points for evacuation at the places without bomb shelters nearby. So people stay without any ways to rescue in case of shelling.
Maluitina on her part complains that the volunteers often don’t coordinate their work with the officials.
Ukrainian officials report some 2,240 people have been evacuated from the war zone since Jan. 28 as fighting raged in eastern Ukraine. In all, 942,748 people have been displaced as of Jan. 30, according to United Nations estimates.
Meanwhile, at least 8,000 people left in Debaltseve and more than 5,000 in a town of Popasna in Luhansk Oblast, Oleksandra Dvoretska, the coordinator of Vostok SOS (East SOS), a volunteer support center, told the Kyiv Post.
It’s impossible to save all of these people without at least one day of cease-fire and the creation of special corridor for evacuation, the volunteers say.
“There’s no safety corridor in Debaltseve or Chernukhino, so the volunteers risk their lives trying to evacuate people under the shelling. And our bus can take no more than 25 people,” Filipska told the Kyiv Post. “But once it took almost 100 citizens. You know, people wait for these buses as for a miracle.”
Kyiv Post staff writers Oksana Grystenko and Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected] and[email protected]
