Ukrainian Aid Workers Risk Life and Limb to Get Civilians to Safety

Vasyl Pipa is not a Ukrainian soldier, but his job, at times, can be as dangerous as fighting in the trenches. As members of the White Angels, a branch of the police that evacuates civilians from the front line, he and others take extreme risks to rescue some of the last civilians who remain close to the fighting.

One of Mr. Pipa’s tasks is to evacuate civilians from Kurakhove, and from along the entire front line in the region. Traveling there is like flooring it through a thicket of life-threatening risks: Jets, drones and artillery can quickly annihilate an armored vehicle. Today, Russians control the city center, where fighting continues among the last few streets before the Kurakhove Power Station.

As the deadly Russian march forward intensifies, most Ukrainians are running for their lives. While some are loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin and welcome the white, blue and red flag hoisted here, the majority of those left behind are elderly, disabled and poor, with no means of relocating. Helping them to safety is the White Angels’ job, and as the front line shifts, its urgency is rising.

The depth of the hardship was evident this fall over seven weeks of observing the White Angels and other aid groups as they brought food and other essentials to the civilians and evacuated the ones who wanted to leave. They operated in town squares, in battered shelters and in destroyed homes.

“When we lost the armored car, damaged by a drone, we brought the people to an abandoned house,” Mr. Pipa said, recalling a recent evacuation. “The woman had a severe jaw injury, and a man was brought in with them, wounded too. The drones broke the roof and dropped the ammunition inside. Another drone was controlling the grenade dropping,” he said, adding, “We were chased.”

The White Angels finally rushed the civilians to temporary safety, scraping through rubble and under Russian bombardment, and were then able to remove the group farther from the front.

Vasyl Chupak and his brother, Viktor, had a long history of run-ins with law enforcement and had spent half their lives in prison. But this fall, Vasyl Chupak went to the Kurakhove police station voluntarily. His brother had cirrhosis of the liver and was deteriorating quickly. They knew they needed to leave before it was too late.

The police sped across town to their apartment block to find Viktor Chupak emaciated and living in squalor. An armored van took them to an ambulance, which transported them to a hospital.

Kurakhove, a small city in the southern reach of the Donetsk region, sits on the eastern edge of the Zaporizhzhia region’s defense lines. Only about 800 residents, including children, remain from a prewar population of 18,220. Those who stay live in the basements of apartment buildings without electricity, running water or heating. Every day, the city is subjected to artillery fire, mortars and drone attacks.

With people stranded and no supplies, Mr. Pipa and his colleagues delivered food and supplies to the last open shop. Nothing would reach here without their help, leaving people to survive only on scarce canned food.

The Donbas, of which the Donetsk region is part, used to be Ukraine’s most densely populated area. Cities like Avdiivka, Bakhmut and Vuhledar were home to tens of thousands of people. When these and a slew of others were destroyed, falling under Russian control, most residents fled to Pokrovsk.

The fall of neighboring areas has brought Russian forces ever closer to Pokrovsk, turning it from a safe refuge for civilians into a ghost town. By November, the population had shrunk to about 11,400, from 60,000. After the capture of the village of Shevchenko in mid-December, Russian forces are now less than a mile away.

The Russian Army has gone all-in to capture every inch of the surrounding area — a flashpoint of the war and potentially a significant prize for Mr. Putin.

“The Pokrovsk and Kurakhove region remains the most difficult along the entire front line,” said Capt. Artem Mokhnach of Ukraine, the spokesman for Operational Tactical Group Donetsk.

One day last month, under a gray and stormy sky, the heavy sound of bombing rumbled menacingly around the outskirts of Pokrovsk. The city is awash with imposing arrays of concrete “dragon’s teeth,” anti-tank fortifications. A local woman, Natalia, strolled through the concrete spikes to arrive at a shop with a meager selection of salted pork fat and pickled vegetables.

The war has hit her hard, she agreed, describing the lack of running water and heating. “But where to go?” she concluded.

Russian drones maraud throughout the city, and artillery fire is a daily occurrence. The flight range of the drones has increased from about three miles less than two years ago to about 15 miles now. They present a significant daily threat to civilians, and to humanitarian aid workers coming to help them.

These fast-flying and precise lethal weapons have been hunting and stalking the local population, the head of Pokrovsk’s military and civilian administration, Serhii Dobriak, said.

“A family was going to Novotroitske, a father, mother, and son,” he said. “They saw that it was an ordinary civilian car, a Lada. But the drone hit them on purpose. It killed the son. The mother’s arm was torn off.”

“Neither the ambulance nor the military could reach them,” he added.

On Dec. 12, a pipeline was bombed beyond repair, cutting off all gas to the town. On the same day, the Pokrovsk city administration announced the interruption of drinking water deliveries to the distribution points because the bombardments made it too dangerous. The most important thing is for civilians to leave the city, Mr. Dobriak said.

Entire blocks of Myrnohrad, a city near Pokrovsk, have been destroyed and are now covered in gray concrete dust, with people’s belongings blown into the street.

“In Myrnohrad, the enemy is constantly inflicting indiscriminate fire on the city using various types of weapons,” explained Captain Mokhnach, the spokesman for Operational Tactical Group Donetsk. This mining town, adjacent to the city of Pokrovsk, which in 2020 had a population of 48,864, now has just 1,658 inhabitants, local officials said.

A black smear stained the street beside a woman selling food from a small stand. She said it was the blood of a woman who had been decapitated by a rocket that fell on the building next door. Her account was corroborated by several others, including two men who said they had witnessed it.

Viktor Shotropa, 36, of Global Empowerment Mission, a disaster relief group, tries to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the people along the front line. Two 20-ton trucks from his agency containing about 1,500 food parcels are delivered daily to the Donetsk region to help cope with the ongoing crisis. Mr. Shotropa knows the situation well; he has delivered aid to dangerous Ukrainian cities such as Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar.

“In Pokrovsk, the situation is just beginning,” he said. “We should prepare for the worst.”

In the Myrnohrad town square, Mr. Shotropa opened the rear doors of his armored van as people appeared, seemingly from nowhere, with bicycles, wheelbarrows, carts and baby carriages to transport the food aid boxes home. Pushing and shouting, they tried to get a box before the supply ran out or the Russian drone operators noticed the crowd.

After almost three years of evacuating people, Mr. Pipa remembers a man who died despite his efforts to save him. “It’s hard to bear when people die, ordinary people in your arms,” he said. “It’s just hard. It leaves such an emptiness inside.”