Support Our Mission Read Our Latest Edition BYLINE TIMES IMPACT: Find out about the changes you made happen The black van speeds along at 130 km/h on a road lined with sunflower fields. Behind the wheel of the ambulance, Andrey, a volunteer with the Relief organisation, keeps his eyes fixed on the road. Next to him, Sacha, a former soldier who has since switched to evacuating civilians, scans the sky, phone in hand. A message has just popped up on a military app: a Russian reconnaissance drone has been spotted within a radius of two to five kilometres. "So far, so good," he says, without taking his eyes off the screen. "The biggest danger comes from the drones we call 'lookouts,'" Sacha explains. "They can lie in ambush along the roadside. You can't spot them until they're right up close and charging at us." For these teams, the danger is very real. On February 4, a team of volunteers was targeted by a fibre-optic drone, followed by artillery fire, this time in the town of Berislav, in the Kherson region. Several civilians were seriously injured during that evacuation. A volunteer police officer filmed the scene with his GoPro camera. "To the Russians, an ambulance and a military vehicle are one and the same." Andrey sums up without taking his eyes off the road. "If they see a vehicle, they destroy it," he continues, gripping the steering wheel nervously as Sacha recalls a previous evacuation. "We heard the sound of the drones. We quickly got out of the car and hid in the bushes," he says. "We could hear a buzzing sound, but the drone didn't see us. It was frightening," he says. This is how the evacuation of the last civilians from the front-line zone has been proceeding for months. Inexpensive and easy to fly, FPV (first-person view) drones are now swarming this 30-kilometre-deep strip along the front line, which residents and soldiers have come to call the "kill zone". The ambulance brakes suddenly. Three villagers come out of their homes and get in, helped by the volunteers. "Thank you! Thank you so much, my angels," exclaims one of village residents. In the back of the armoured vehicle are three civilians who have just left Borova, about 5 km from the front line, located right in the heart of the combat zone. In just a few minutes, they were evacuated from the area, taking with them three meagrely filled shopping bags. During the journey to evacuate these civilians to safe areas, Halyna Mykolaïvna, born in 1965, opens up. She clutches her bag tightly. She describes what she left behind. Her house "is still standing for now." In her neighbourhood, other houses have already been destroyed, and neighbours have died. "It's very scary," she says. Looking haggard, she scans the passing landscape, as if to verify that the danger has truly disappeared. "Drones were constantly flying over the area. They're destroying everything," she explains. "They're striking military vehicles and, above all, civilians." "Drones were flying around like bees," she insists. She pauses before concluding in a whisper, "There was nothing left in the city. We could just hear the explosions all day long." Those most reluctant to leave are often the elderly, who have resigned themselves to their fate. That's where the volunteers step in, with the prior consent of the family members. Through a secure phone line, they receive dozens of calls every day from panicked families, at least one of whose loved ones remains trapped. What follows is a process of locating the person, making contact, and then extracting them under fire in just a few minutes. All the makeshift routes eventually lead to the same place: a transit centre in Kharkiv, a mandatory stop for evacuees from across the region. In the lobby, families wait on benches, bags piled at their feet. "We're currently receiving between 200 and 250 evacuees every day," explains Serhii, who has been one of the centre's coordinators for several years. He notes that this is a pace never before seen, and o...
