Millions of Ukrainians know what it’s like to pack their entire life into a few bags and leave for the unknown. Humanitarian Media Hub has launched a project called “Temporarily.Forever” – about displaced people who left temporarily but stayed forever.
In the first episode, we talk about the starting point: the moment when a person decides to get on an evacuation bus and leave their home. Oleksandr Lavreniuk, the head of the operational response sector of the Ukrainian Red Cross Emergency Response Service, spoke about how evacuation from the front-line territories is organized.
A plan made in advance
The first thing the emergency response service advises is to build your own plan of action before it becomes really dangerous. This is the logic of an emergency backpack, familiar to Ukrainians since before the full-scale invasion: gather the most necessary things, determine the period for which the things will be enough, and keep everything ready.
Lavreniuk emphasizes that even those who do not plan to leave while the situation is stable should understand the likely scenario. When the front line approaches, shelling begins, or housing is destroyed, it will be necessary to leave the house to save lives. Therefore, it is worth planning in advance, even if the line of contact is still far away.
He advises adding a list of contacts to the emergency kit – phone numbers of relatives, close people, and government agencies that can be contacted. A separate tip concerns people with limited mobility and families with such people: if it is impossible to leave on their own, a request for transportation and evacuation is submitted to local self-government structures.
Read also:
3.9 million internally displaced people: what is happening to Ukrainian refugees within the country
Who to call
There is no single number that solves everything. The chain of appeals starts with local authorities – starostas, united territorial communities, city military administrations, and can then reach the regional military administration. An application for evacuation is submitted there, after which the authorities plan the general evacuation: they gather people at the gathering point and organize the staged movement through transfer points and hubs to safer areas.
If there is access to the internet or radio communication, information can be obtained from neighbors or representatives of funds and humanitarian organizations that come to the territory. At the same time, the National Police patrol the front-line settlements: law enforcement officers conduct raids with proposals to leave. This is not yet a forced evacuation – the police are responsible for the safety of the local population, so they explain how to organize the departure correctly. When the area becomes too dangerous for public organizations and the State Emergency Service, the evacuation is taken over by the police themselves, who have armored vehicles in some regions to enter the most risky areas.
Lavreniuk separately talks about personal responsibility. On the fifth year of the full-scale invasion, strikes are recorded even in Zakarpattia and Lviv regions, so the position of “it will bypass us” turns against people themselves when the situation changes rapidly and it’s too late to prepare.
Why the Ukrainian Red Cross remains the point of entry
You can contact the regional or district organization of the Ukrainian Red Cross, the hotline indicated on the website, or any representative of the organization that a person sees on the spot. This also applies to volunteers. In the front-line territories, they are involved in field and auxiliary work and have a significant amount of information. If there is no answer from the volunteer himself, he turns to his senior colleagues, returns to people with the result, or passes on contacts further along the chain.
When it comes to a dangerous zone that the Red Cross cannot enter with its own forces, communication is transferred to state services – the State Emergency Service and the National Police, which are provided with data on people who want to leave.
Read also:
IDP Assistance in 2026 — Who Will Receive 2000 and 3000 UAH and Why the Application Must Be Submitted by June 1
When a relative submits an application
An application for evacuation can also be submitted by a relative or acquaintance from a safe territory, even if there is no contact with the person. The Ukrainian Red Cross transmits the information to the front-line territory, conducts monitoring, and if necessary, contacts the State Emergency Service. If it is possible to reach the point on their own, the team makes a trip, checks if the person is on the spot and in what condition they are, and asks if they want to leave.
This principle Lavreniuk emphasizes separately: evacuation takes place only voluntarily. If a person refuses, they are not taken out forcibly, but their data can be transferred to the local authorities, the information about their condition can be updated, and additional humanitarian assistance can be provided.
How long the process takes
From the moment of application to the actual departure, it takes different amounts of time. When a request comes from a third party, the term stretches from a day to a week or two – everything depends on the possibility of getting to the territory and the availability of communication on the spot. A separate story is the urgent evacuations after shelling, which volunteers have carried out more than once: the wounded were given first pre-medical aid and evacuated directly from the scene, in cooperation with state services and the police.
Read also:
How to Get Financial Assistance from the Red Cross in 2026
Bakhmut, January 2023
The most vivid example of the cost of delay is a story told by Lavreniuk himself. In January 2023, the team entered Bakhmut on their last trip at the request of one woman. They searched for her in the city for about an hour, where some shops were still working on generators: she was not at one point, not at the other, and was finally found in a friend’s house, where her elderly mother lived.
The woman agreed to leave immediately. The team offered to take her friend and his mother as well – there was a place and an opportunity to evacuate them. In response, they asked to come the next day so that they could receive their pension. The rescuers explained that payments and documents would not disappear anywhere and could be arranged later, but the people decided to wait for their pension and agreed to be picked up in Chasiv Yar. The next day, the team waited there for about three hours, went through all the queues, inquired with the services, representations of the pension fund, and Ukrposhta. No one had seen these people. Their further fate remained unknown.
How to determine where it is safe to enter
In each front-line region, there is a regional rapid response team that is responsible for evacuation, transportation, and operational trips. The safety of a specific territory is now determined by the team commander, since since 2022, protocols and safety distances have changed significantly. If earlier the gray zone lasted conditionally from ten to twenty kilometers, now it can reach from three to fifty – this is the zone of action of drones.
According to this logic, the gray zone is already becoming the cities themselves. Lavreniuk gives examples of Zaporizhzhia, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kharkiv, which is located forty kilometers from the state border. The decision to leave for a particular area is made by the commander based on the results of internal monitoring. Part of the teams consists of volunteers, so they can formally refuse a risky trip, but this happens rarely.
Read also:
Why IDPs in Ukraine face varying prospects for long-term solutions
Evacuation with animals
A separate block of conversation is about pets. The service does not have vehicles for elephants and giraffes, but cats, dogs, goats, chickens have been evacuated more than once. It is impossible to take large livestock: if a person has a few cows, the priority is obvious – to save the person’s life. Owners are warned about this in advance.
It is worth saying about the animal even during the call. The team asks to organize a carrier or at least knock together a wooden box – this is a matter of safety for the volunteers themselves, because the dog knows only its owners and can behave unpredictably during transportation due to stress. The service conducts master classes on handling animals and providing them with pre-medical care.
Lavreniuk’s most unusual experience is related to livestock. In Luhansk region, on the opposite side of Rubizhne, the team had to leave two cows: the owners with their dog were evacuated, and the cows were released to graze in the fields.
The main problem is things, not animals
The type of transport depends on the scenario. A person with limited mobility who requires constant supervision is evacuated by ambulance, where a cat in a carrier can also be taken. General evacuation is carried out by ordinary cars, such as a passenger van, and for roads in the outback, an off-road vehicle is suitable.
The biggest problem is not animals, but the amount of things. Some people plan to actually move with household appliances or a bag of potatoes. For example, the host shared that her 70-year-old grandfather’s emergency suitcase, who was leaving a front-line village, consisted of photo albums, a cup, a few pills, a teaspoon, a jar of sugar, and a jar of coffee.
“You won’t take money with you, but memories – yes, and you can always make something of your own from coffee and sugar on the road,” says Oleksandr.
The team discusses a simple rule in advance: take only the most necessary things for the first time, because material things can be restored in a new place, and extra space in the car is a place for another person.
Read also:
Due to the war, depression rates in Ukraine have risen to critical levels
