Consider This from NPR - Meet The Volunteers Running Into A War Zone To Rescue Civilians

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

A group of volunteers is braving artillery barrages to evacuate residents from towns and cities in Ukraine's Donbas region, including Bakhmut, the epicenter of fighting in the eastern part of the country.NPR's Frank Langfitt speaks with two rescuers, Kuba Stasiak, 29, a former journalist from Poland, and Andre West, 22, from Germany, who document their rescues on Instagram 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

Dimitro Kutsubailo dreamed of going to art school. Instead, he spent nearly all his adult life on the battlefield, fighting for Ukraine. That's where his life was taken last week. He was 27 years old. Remember Dimitro today, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video address. Eternal memory to the heroes. Kotsubailo's life traced Ukraine's struggle for sovereignty over the past decade. As a teenager, he demonstrated against a Russian-backed president in Kyiv's Maidan Square. Then he joined the Ukrainian army to fight against separatists in the east. At 21, he became the country's youngest military commander. Many Ukrainians knew him by his call sign, Da Vinci.

Thousands turned out for his funeral in Kyiv. One of them was 25-year-old Karina Nikolaeva, who brought her 5-year-old son. I want to show my child how everything starts and how it ends in Ukraine right now. I grew up forced to glorify old heroes from a foreign state. I want him to understand what it means to be a real patriot. Da Vinci was killed in the battle for Bakhmut. It's a small city in the east of the country. For the moment, it's still controlled by Ukraine, but Russia has been slowly closing in over months of grueling fighting. The city itself has been devastated. Videos posted on social media

show block after block of shelled and collapsed buildings, heaps of smoldering rubble. But consider this. There are still people living in Bakhmut. Something like 10% of the population remained as of the beginning of this month. And a ragtag group of rescuers is driving headlong into the center of the most dangerous city in Europe to try to get them out. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, March 14th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. No city in Ukraine has seen worse fighting in recent months than Bakhmut. But Ukraine's military forces can't legally compel citizens living there to evacuate. So says military spokesman Serhii Cherovaty. We tell them that Russia is threatening you. But many people, especially those who are older, they are afraid of changing their surroundings. Maybe they think they will not be accepted anywhere else.

Plus, getting out isn't easy. People are huddled in basements without running water or electricity, cut off from the outside world. And artillery barrages are still pounding the city. So a group of volunteers has taken it upon themselves to try to get those citizens out. NPR's Frank Langfitt has this profile of one volunteer named Kuba. Kuba Stasiak is running through the rubble-strewn streets of Bakhmut. A shell has just hit a local university. Bright orange flames pour from the first floor. Kuba records it all on his cell phone,

which sits snugly in the front pocket of his flak jacket. He later uploads the video to Instagram. Hello? Hello? Kuba's worried someone may be trapped inside the university. Ukrainian soldiers, they're hiding in nearby buildings,

yell to him that it's empty. Kuba continues through the city, searching for a woman who was asked to be evacuated. Lilia! Lilia! There's no cell service in Bakhmut. All Kuba can do is call her name. Shells fall every few seconds.

Finally, Lilia appears at her gate in a bright red coat. She's joined by a neighbor. Kuba calls fellow volunteers who arrive in a van, and they've whisked Lilia out of the city to safety. Cuba is among dozens of volunteers who spent months evacuating people from Bakhmut in the country's Donbass region. About half the volunteers are Ukrainian. The rest come from abroad, including the United States, Britain, Sweden, even Russia. Cuba's from Poland.

This morning, I'm riding in the back of his beat-up Lada, a rattle-trap Russian sedan that dates to the 1990s, as Kuba heads back to Bakhmut for another evacuation. We pass through the first of a series of military checkpoints. Basically a concrete bunker in the middle of the road, with tires on top and there's a crane in the back that's building another another pillbox. Kuba acknowledges that evacuating people is dangerous. In the last couple weeks we heard about a couple different volunteers that got killed. Some of them we knew there are so many casualties, so many dead people all around, every single day in Bahmut. But he says the work's rewards outweigh its risks.

Kuba recalls rescuing an elderly woman from her frigid apartment. She was sleeping, and after like five seconds, she spotted my face, she started to cry. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right, Kuba tells her. She took my hand. I got very emotional about it. She couldn't walk, so me and my friend took her to the car.

And I had this impression that she really spent, like, months in her bed till this point. Like many volunteers here, Kuba's motivated by altruism, as well as personal reasons. As for a young boy, I was, like, always wondering what will be my reaction for the circumstances of the war. I wasn't so sure about it, and I just wanted to prove it to myself. And Kuba, who's 29, he's also ambitious. He used to work as a journalist in Poland, but editors were reluctant to send him to war. In the early days of this conflict, he watched other reporters begin to make a name for themselves. I witnessed many careers that were growing just because somebody decided to go to Ukraine and to risk his life on a daily basis. My big heroes like, I don't know, Hemingway, Orwell, somebody decided to go to Ukraine and to risk his life on a daily basis.

My big heroes like, I don't know, Hemingway, Orwell, they decided to make the decision for their own, and they were just making their big careers. Both men served as volunteers in war. The experience shaped both their writing and their reputations. Kuba plans to use his evacuation videos as raw material for a book. Kuba and other volunteers say they were also drawn to Ukraine because they were dissatisfied with their lives back home. In my teenage years, I spent six years with depression. I was basically

just a vegetable on a computer. Andre West is a 22-year-old from Germany. He used to work putting armor on luxury cars. Andre has spent the last year evacuating people in the Donbass. I just want to do more with my life and just use it in a good way. Instead of being a vegetable, I can help people. That makes me happy. Andri says evacuations can be surprising and frustrating. He describes one rescue of an elderly woman. Everything was blowing up around us, and shrapnel was flying into the apartment. So we had to lay flat on the ground in the apartment.

Andri had parked his car far away because the shrapnel on the road would have shredded his tires. So I had to run with this bab because the shrapnel on the road would have shredded his tires. So I had to run with this babushka all the way to the car. It was just 200 meters, but these 200 meters were just crazy. And yeah, at the place where I brought her, I got told that she has been evacuated eight times. Andrei thinks the woman's family pressed for evacuation, but the lady never really wanted to leave. I was really, really mad that I risked my life and spent so much time on this woman. Back in Bakhmut, Kuba has found his next evacuees, an elderly Russian couple, doctors.

He records their meeting on his phone. They've been living in a basement for three months, but as they prepare to leave their home, probably forever, they're dressed in fur hats and elegant winter coats with fur-lined collars. They look as if they're heading to the opera. They moved here decades ago, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. The woman insists she doesn't blame Russia, their former homeland, for the war. You must understand we don't have anything against Russia. Russia has nothing to do with it. We don't want our names disclosed. Who do you hold responsible for the destruction of Bakhmut?

I believe both sides. Some who remain in besieged cities here in the Donbass are partial to Russia. Some are just waiting for the Russian troops to arrive. After a night in a refugee center, the couple board a bus that will take them away to a new life. As we wait to see them off, Kuba says he hopes the couple learned something along the journey. We will go to Poland or Luxembourg, whatever they choose. There will be no war whatsoever.

They will see that like 99% of the population of Europe is just trying to help Ukraine. And maybe, just maybe, it will change, it will help to change their perspective. If it wants, I can do nothing about it. I'm just happy that they maybe, just maybe, it will change, it will help to change their perspective. If it wants, I can do nothing about it.

I'm just happy that they are, you know, made it alive. And with that, the bus heads out, taking the couple away from the war and towards Europe. NPR's Frank Langfitt in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. At the top of this episode, you heard reporting from NPR's Joanna Kakissis.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.