Consider This from NPR - A Mission To Evacuate Premature Twin Babies From Ukraine

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

More than two million people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked two weeks ago - at least half of them children. It's a dangerous journey for anyone, let alone premature babies who were already fighting for their lives. This is the harrowing story of some of the youngest evacuees - babies less than two weeks old who were born prematurely. Each day, they've been growing stronger as Kyiv grows weaker. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Brian Stern runs a Florida-based nonprofit called Project Dynamo. Their job is to rescue or exfiltrate people from conflict. I can hear you okay. Can you hear me? This past summer, he was in Afghanistan, helping people leave when U.S. troops were pulling out. And this week, he was making his way out of Kiev, Ukraine, with some particularly precious cargo. We hit two different baby hospitals in Kiev.

Both of them were kind of in the middle of the city. It sounded like the shelling had started while we were there. Stern has been traveling with three premature babies. If dust gets in the room, they're in trouble. If the power goes out in the room, they're in trouble. If there's a whole bunch of shot up troops and stuff and the doctors get spread thin, they're going to be in trouble. So bottom line is, let's get them bunch of shot up troops and stuff. The doctors get spread thin, they're going to be in trouble. So bottom line is, is get him out of Kiev. A video he shared with NPR shows medical staff wheeling out one baby in an incubator and loading the infant into an ambulance. They're backing the ambulance up to her.

Two neonatologist specialists are in the ambulance with the infants. We picked up baby Lenny and baby Moishe first, mostly because they're in better shape. A third baby, who was also part of the extraction, was weaker, more fragile. She's on a ventilator, so the idea was to have less stress on her, the better. Stern spoke with NPR as he drove behind the ambulance that held the infants. The convoy only stopped to feed the babies or refuel as they headed to the Polish border. We're in the snow. The doctor's doing a quick check while we get some gas.

And everything is great. Two of these infants, twins Lenny and Moysha, are American. A Ukrainian surrogate gave birth to them prematurely just as Russia invaded. As they're getting stronger and bigger and all that stuff, the situation on the ground is getting worse and worse and worse. Consider this. More than two million people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked two weeks ago, at least half of them children. It's a dangerous journey for anyone, let alone premature babies who were

already fighting for their lives. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro in Poland near the Ukrainian border. It's Wednesday, March 9th. It's Consider This from NPR. We left off with Brian Stern tailing an ambulance a few hours from Ukraine's border with Poland. In the ambulance are three premature babies being cared for by specialists, two of those babies Americans. Mommy and daddy are waiting for us on the Polish border. Wow. OK. And so they will meet you when you cross into Poland. Correct. They're literally waiting on the border, freezing to death as I'm talking to you right now. And they'll meet their babies for the first time.

Yes, for the first time. That's NPR's Leila Fadal speaking with Stern. She's been reporting this story from Ukraine, and she called him as the convoy navigated checkpoints along the road. The connection's spotty at times. Hello? Brian? Sure. Brian?

Signal reconnecting still. So I'm just trying to reach Brian Stern again. They are in the middle of nowhere, he said, and so reception is spotty. I'm not sure how far they've gotten from Kiev and how long they have until the Polish border. Stern can't be reached for most of the day, but then, hours later, just before 11 p.m. Hi, how are you? He picks up. Yeah, we are at the border.

I can't believe my blood pressure will finally be able to go back to normal levels once we get rid of these, you know, precious cargo. Sean, we're going. Sean, let's go. I'm on the Polish side of the border, where Lenny and Moishe's father, Alex Spector, is anxiously waiting to meet his sons. This whole experience is just, it's hard to wrap your mind around it. Alex, who goes by Sasha, was born in Kyiv when it was part of the Soviet Union. His family came to the U.S. as refugees. Over the weekend, he and his sister flew to Poland.

He constantly called his partner Irma, the baby's mother, to give her updates at home in Chicago. All day yesterday, Sasha and his sister tracked the baby's journey through Ukraine, waiting at their hotel near the hospital until they got word that it was time to move. We're going to the border to meet them with the representatives of American Embassy, and they will basically accompany us. Will you ride in the ambulance? No, no, because there are doctors in the ambulance. There's no space, but we have a car. All I can say is please drive safely

because I know you're going to have a lot of emotions. Oh, yeah, my sister's here. She's going to drive, so yeah. I'm in no condition to drive. Sasha texts me around 11 p.m. At the Polish border now, three exclamation points. So soon. Can't wait. From the border, it's another hour's drive through a raging snowstorm

to the hospital in the Polish town of Zhezhov. The streets are silent and dark when the flashing blue lights of emergency vehicles suddenly illuminate the surrounding buildings. Oh, the ambulance is pulling up. There's a whole motorcade of cars. There's a van with a cross on the front, some passenger vehicles. There was a police escort. It looks like the babies are arriving.

There are some very, very happy adults that I can see in the back of one of the vans. Big, big hug. Masks are not able to hide the joy that these people are feeling right now. These two nurses in bright pink scrubs have rolled out this little mobile crib, and the babies are coming off the ambulance and into the crib a man walks up to us his eyes smiling behind his mask you're sasha oh my god congratulations thank you thank you it's a the twins are already in okay great they're just tiny but amazing it's just that I didn't, because in the photographs, they look so big. But in real life,

it's just, oh my God. It's just insane. It was like a storm. A winter storm. A snowstorm. The war didn't want to let them go. But we got them out. The war didn't want to let them go.

Thanks for the boot people of Ukraine. The head of the extraction team, Brian Stern, steps outside for a cigarette. He's wearing a medical boot for an old foot injury. This is our 13th operation in 12 days of war. He says they took artillery fire twice during this extraction, telling the story with a bit of gallows humor.

So do you know who was firing artillery at you? The Russians. Yeah, probably not the Finnish. The Ukrainians didn't mistake you for hostile forces, though. No, no, no, no, no. They were shelling something else, but it was close enough where the ground was shaking. I mean, the artillery doesn't care what it is. It's going to land where it lands, you know?

So the artillery doesn't say, like, oh, well, you know, there's babies here, so we'll go somewhere else. He says the checkpoints were touch and go because some of the men on their team were Ukrainians of military age who could have been conscripted to fight. On the website for Brian's company, Project Dynamo, people in Ukraine have been filling out forms asking for evacuations. It's like, we're like the world's worst travel agency, right? It's like the worst all-inclusive vacation. Case managers in the U.S. go through the applications,

prioritizing requests that seem both urgent and viable. Right now for Ukraine, our database is tipping 10,000 people. Oh my God. From perspective, right? This is day 12. Right? Day 12. 10,000 people, and how many did you tick off the list today? These guys weren't even on the list. Yeah, we didn't even make a dent today. Yeah, that's why I've got to go back.

We've got to make a dent tomorrow. Yeah, this was a special case. Very, very, very special case. Once Lenny and Moishe are safe inside the NICU, everyone meets back at the hotel to eat something. It's 2 in the morning. Everyone's been wound up since before dawn, tracking the

end of this journey that began almost two weeks ago when the boys were born. Sasha says he's in shock after meeting his twins. It's just been so long, he says, and nonstop. The emotions come later. Because it's just, it's too huge. So my friends, they're like, welcome, finally, welcome to the normal fatherhood. And I'm like, okay, thank God. But the real life begins now. And this was the surreal life. You know, the twins, I had to look at them and be saturated with their presence.

Be saturated with their presence. Sasha can't stop talking about all the people who have been helping in the last two weeks. You know, my whole family are from Kiev, and we have very deep roots in there. We still have family there, and a lot of friends. And, you know, like my aunt has a childhood friend who was one of the people bringing food. But right now, I just, I think, for the first time, I feel Ukrainian. Because when his family left Kyiv, it was still part of the Soviet Union. It's something that became incredibly important to me. Through my boys, of course. You're going to have quite a story to tell your boys when they're grown up.

For sure. They better not have bad grades, because I'm going to tell them, like, you know, just the amount of effort we put into bringing you home. I imagine they'll bring somebody home for prom, and you'll say to their prom date, do you know how these boys were? I think they will already know. Everybody gathers around. Brian, Sasha, his sister, the surrogate, and the helpers.

They open two bottles of champagne. All right, so this is for Lenny and Moshe, and for all the wonderful people that helped to bring them here. Sasha says a new chapter of his life begins today. He doesn't know this chapter very well yet, but he knows the previous chapter, he says, better than anyone should. This episode was reported alongside NPR host Leila Fadl and her team at Morning Edition. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.