Ukraine's 'hell jumpers'

0:00This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, millions of civilians have been forced out of their homes by the war. But some have chosen to stay. Civilians are still there, literally, with bombs flying over their heads, hitting their homes, drones buzzing overhead. For the freedom of the people. These are people who have had four and a half years to make a decision to stay or go.

1:04Some can't leave, some won't leave. And there are others who risk their lives to rescue the last civilians living near the frontline. I was struck by something said by a volunteer called Badan Zoyakov. After being wounded on one of the evacuation missions, he said, OK, I'm going to recover and go back. These men and women have been described as helljumpers. The so-called Grey Zone, or the Kill Zone, has expanded. So many videos show vehicles being targeted, volunteers being targeted. Since the start of the war, the job of evacuating people has evolved alongside an increasingly hostile and unpredictable battlefield. We ask, who are the evacuators, and why do they risk their lives to save others?

2:04Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Krassi Ivanovich, and this is the global jigsaw from BBC Monitoring, where we look at the world through the lens of its media, exploring the narratives, the propaganda, and the disinformation. Radio Tehran. We are in the country of the country. The most recent countries are not the international community. That era has finished. Let's go back to the 24th of February 2022, when Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, heading for Kiev. Not long afterwards, we began hearing about daring attempts to get people to safety, from the villages and towns near the frontline.

3:06Four and a half years later, evacuations are still happening, but getting less media attention. Civilians are still trapped between life and death, along the 1000 km long frontline. BBC Monitoring's chief analyst Vitaly Shifchenko, who is himself Ukrainian, recently returned from the country. He was in touch with evacuators there. Donetsk police say thousands of civilians are still there in Donetsk region alone, and a massive effort is still underway to get them out of the danger zone. This year alone, more than 3000 civilians have been evacuated from Donetsk region, more than a thousand of them children. So that crusty gives us an idea of the scale of the challenge. Why are they still living there? Is it inability to move? Is it unwillingness? What's behind this resistance to leave their homes?

4:13Some can't leave, some won't leave, and it's important to remember that a huge number of those thousands of civilians trapped in their basements and cellars, they've had a lot of time to have a think about what's going on. So for a lot of these people, this means that they've made a decision to stay. If the mother is here, the father is here. After talking to people involved in these evacuations, it seems as though most of the people who are there on the front line, they are sort of advanced in their years, which means they're rooted. They are wedded to their homes.

5:13One thing I've heard a lot is, well, I've got my chickens and cats and dogs and goats, how am I supposed to leave them all behind? To which evacuators say we can take them with you? There's one notable instance of a police unit in Ukraine's north-eastern Sumer region. They have been approaching one particular gentleman there in a village saying, look, you've got the girl, she's getting really dangerous, you will die probably if you don't leave. And he said, I've got 11 goats, how do you want me to abandon them? So what the police did, they turned up in a massive white van, so they put in that van, not just the gentleman, but all of his 11 goats. I mean, this kind of attachment to your home is something we can all understand. But what I find extraordinary is that it's not just the people who are determined to stay, but we hear about people who have returned, there was one case of a woman who returned and opened a kebab shop, which is an extraordinary act of defiance.

6:33Why do people go back? If you are more able-bodied, you can come and go if you want. A lot of people have been following. It came to a conclusion that there's more to life than just physical safety. Some people, after going to safer places, well, then Ukraine, or abroad, they reach the conclusion that, you know, I'm fed and watered, I'm safe, but a huge chunk of my life is missing. I don't feel at home here, I feel out of place here, I'm losing my identity, I'm going back, whatever happens.

7:37You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. Now let's turn to the people who are doing the evacuations, who are the evacuators? What kind of people take of this job? All sorts of people, Christy. There's an official police unit called White Angels. There are numerous volunteers. The military are involved in it. When they are going into a town of village and passing through it and they see a civilian that they tend to offer them to leave, it's kind of unusual and notable that the military, the police and civilian volunteers, they work really, really closely together. And I spoke to somebody from the police in the Nets region. I asked them, do these civilian volunteers did not get in your way? They said that, well, they have expertise, they know what they're doing, some of them have really important local knowledge, so they go and missions together.

8:46In terms of who these people are specifically, I've been following one Ukrainian TV personality, TV DJ TV presenter Denis Christov, who dropped all that and became an evacuator. Many people doing that, completely switching their lines of activity. Another person I've been in touch with is called Vlad Mahorsky, he's a businessman from Zaporizhe, and he's also a religious man, he's a pastor. I am a believer, I'm a church pastor and my calling is saving people, so that's my role. Our country is going through such times when you can't stand aside. You have got to do all you can for victory, so that the enemy doesn't move even further into our land. I was struck by something said by a volunteer called Bahadan Zoyakov.

9:46After being wounded on one of the evacuation missions, he said, okay, I'm willing now I'm going to recover and go back. It's a calling and the mission, what does it take, though, to become an evacuator? Because presumably a desire to help and a kind heart is not enough. Oh, it's absolutely not enough, Christy. You've really got to know what you're doing. Otherwise, the best case scenario you become a liability, the worst case scenario you're going to die, painfully. But I've logged a chunk of from the Nets police. He said that when the train police evacuators, they prefer local people. We had nothing in writing telling us what to do and how. We had to learn on the go whenever we evacuated people or delivered humanitarian aid. All these details to do with tactics, time of day, logistics, routes and roads. That's why back then, and to this day, we make sure that all police officers are locals who understand the logistics and the location.

10:54Because they know the routes, they know the little nukes and little footpaths that help evacuate when things go south quickly with all these drones buzzing around with endless Russian attacks. You need to know how these drones operate. You need to know how to use anti-dron technology. Vlad Mahorsky from the Parisian, he showed me what he had. This piece of kit at drone detector, a drone analyzer, then an at-srow pistol for drones. This rifle too. This is what we need to defend ourselves and other people against FPV drones. FPV drones carrying shaped charge explosives burn through the armor. You have got to be very careful. It was a pretty big drone detector, which beeps when there's a drone about. Then Vlad had a pistol that shoots nets out to capture the drones, not bullets but nets.

12:04And also a big, good, old fashioned rifle that shoots down drones to survive. You need to know that. Art drones, the biggest danger that they have to navigate. So-called FPV drones, yes. First person view drones, which are smaller than ubiquitous Sheahead drones, for example, but they are very lethal. In a previous episode of the Global Jigsaw, we looked into how drones transformed this war. We explored Ukraine's and Russia's drone-building capacity. The Iranian Sheahead drones are mass-produced in Russia under the name of Geran. Yes, that means uranium, the flower. As for FPV drones, Russian officials told Bloomberg that the country produces more than 15,000 per day, orders of magnitude more than at the start of the war. Russia has found a way of getting them across longer distances. What they do, basically two things. One is using motherships, a bigger drone that can travel longer distances, with lots of FPV drones on it, they scatter and kill.

13:17The second way of doing it is using what they call a mesh network topology, where these smaller FPV drones relay radio signals from each other and then onto the operator. This allows them to travel for longer distances. So to cut and mouse game, it endlessly changes and to survive you've got to stay one step ahead of your enemy. Which is why the vans that they use are equipped with this grill on top, right? This is to protect the vehicle from drones. They call them barbecue grills. Vlad is using one of them. It's a big van and there's a grill on top. The idea is that if the drone hits the vehicle, it explodes a certain distance away from the actual body of the vehicle. And the hope is that it will reduce the impact of the explosion. And these drones do they target these vehicles deliberately?

14:23It would appear that some do. I've heard several accounts of vehicles with red crosses on them being targeted. The evacuations don't simply ensure civilians are moved to areas of safety. They give a chance of survival to those who are critically ill and injured. In a recent report, the medical charity MSF, doctors without borders, said that the frequency of Russia's attacks on health care suggests that they are a sustained feature of the war. And as they told the BBC, first person view drone strikes are almost always intentional. They are too consistent, too frequent and too precise to be incidental. Vehicles with inscription saying evacuating civilians, they've been targeted as well. So it's no guarantee putting a cross on it or just saying don't hit us where evacuating civilians. That's not always going to help.

15:23So the evacuators are facing lethal danger just to reach their destination just to go to these people. But then they'll have the task of persuading them. How do they do that? It's not easy to convince somebody to leave, leave everything behind and just go places. And people like Denis Christov is really good as a communicator being a leader personality. The main thrust of his communication with somebody who's not prepared to leave is, well, look, there's a way. Do not feel stuck. Do not feel like you're making a choice that is too costly for you as a person. Your dog, your goats, your chickens, they'll come with you. We'll find a place for you to stay.

16:27Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There's one particular video shot by Denis Christov. On the surface of it, it sounds and looks very slow paced, almost routine. And yet what's unfolding is terrifyingly life altering. It's all about life and death choices. So he finds a man in a village almost completely destroyed with explosions in the background. A man with a dog and he tells him, well, look, you've got a dog. If you don't want to save yourself, save your dog, you'll come with you. And the man says, you know what, this is what I've lived on my life. I'm going to stay put. And at the background, you hear the rumble of explosions. Around them, you see very obvious undeniable signs of death and destruction that can't catch up with you, that can kill you.

17:36Come on, go to the hospital. Pavlov Lodyechenko from the Netsk region police, he said they appeal to their relatives to record a short, I don't know, 30 second vizio, which they can show to the person they're trying to evacuate. And now they keep it toward the blue and ask, here's something we've been doing. If people tell us about someone who might be in two minds about evacuating, we ask them to record a short video and relatives get emotional when they record them. There are tears, there are children and grandchildren, it's not blackmail. They show how things really are. So when you turn up and show this short clip, 30, 40 seconds long, it can work. It works well, but not always, unfortunately. And even when they agree to go, the prices yet more heartbreak as they leave everything behind.

18:40You are listening to the Global Jigsaw from BBC Monitoring. So this is a very complex logistical operation and not only they have to know the terrain and evate drones and other whole mix of lethal dangers, they have to persuade reluctant residents to get onto the Vans and Leafs. So it's quite a difficult task. Can you take us through how the evacuation unfolds? What are the different stages? The beginning of this journey in most cases starts with a request for help or a signal, a message that there's somebody there who may need to be evacuated. There's a hotline set up by the government jointly with volunteers, evacuators and police. They can be told of somebody needing evacuation. What happens then needs to happen really quickly because the so-called Grey Zone or the Kill Zone has expanded greatly.

19:45Most of the videos filmed by evacuators, they are really, really fast paced. You need to get into the vehicle quickly and go. We'll take the bus. How can we get in? So many videos show vehicles being targeted, volunteers being targeted. Some of these initial stages, they involve armored vehicles used by the military, by the police, their job is to get you to the safest location possible. Then the next leg is getting to a place of even more safety, a properly organised refugee centre. And then the local authorities and or civilian evacuators, they decide where to put your next.

20:49So anything goes. You find a flight, you move into a flight, you find somebody willing to accept refugees into a flight. That's what happens. We came across an extraordinary recording where an army evacuator offers his own house to the people he's trying to move to save a ground. Which begs the question, how much does the state do and how much is left to volunteers? Ukrainians know that there's a limit to what the state can do. That's why volunteers get involved. But there are state programmes, there is a state effort. The very existence of a special police unit called White Angels means that the state is very acutely aware of these people, thousands of them, in desperate need of evacuation. And the state at least tries to provide them with everything they can provide them with,

21:53from the very first stage of receiving calls in the hotline. You say the evacuators are targeted while they're doing this job. What's the toll on them? One description of read about them is hell-jumpers. It is hell. And just like everybody else, they get wounded and killed. One example is, we just love Ilchenko, a civilian evacuator who got killed on Christmas Day last year, on the way to evacuate a wounded elderly gentleman from Constantinia Vka in the Netsk region. There were two other volunteers with him. He died, they were injured, they recovered, they went back. How is the Ukrainian media portraying the evacuations? Is there a lot of attention to what they're doing? They let actions do the talking. There was one report by InterTV, where they embedded with the police unit evacuating someone, and they got hit.

23:05They showed this incredibly dramatic report of people being targeted, literally evacuating someone who was going to make shift stretcher like a cart with wheels, because that person wasn't mobile. And they were targeted by Russia. So they just showed it without much comment. And I think it's probably the most effective and impressive and most genuine way of showing it. Attacks on Ukraine's responders was recently discussed at the UN Security Council, where a UN official described the patterns they observed. Humanitarian workers in Ukraine are taking immense risks to save lives. Humanitarian workers and assets must be respected. This entails taking active steps to spare them, attacking them directly, strictly prohibited and can amount to war crimes.

24:06When clearly marked humanitarian convoy and first responders rushing to help are killed and injured again and again, this shows a pattern that defies international humanitarian law. Wars have rules, they are unequivocal. Wars are indeed regulated by international humanitarian law based on the Geneva conventions. The RUZA that civilians must be allowed to leave a besieged area to ensure their survival. They contain provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people. So is there a legal framework that regulates volunteer evacuations in Ukraine? There are three types of evacuation. One is voluntary, you offer the chance. The second level is compulsory, where police will knock at the door and say you got to leave. However, you can still refuse, you can sign a form saying I've been informed of the danger. I'm refusing to go.

25:10The third and final, the top level of evacuations is forced, where you have no option. And it's a relatively recent thing. And the law regulating it was passed to guarantee the rights of children. The evacuation is a difficult task for the people to take care of. Because there are some parents who have made the choice to risk their lives and stay put on the frontline, live where they are. But Ukrainian legislators and Ukrainian state, what they argue is that parents do not own children. They have no right to expose them to danger. The Ukrainian state has taken over the Ukrainian state for dozens of years. You said earlier that the evacuators have to be extremely nimble in order to respond to changing circumstances. That's why they pass this law allowing police to forcefully take those children away regardless of whether their parents wanted or not.

26:23You said earlier that the evacuators have to be extremely nimble in order to respond to changing circumstances. How has this process, the job of evacuating civilians, how has it changed over the course of the war? At the start of the war, when drones were not so widespread, not so lethal in terms of ever-present lethal danger. The police would go into a town or village, gather the locals or use megaphone or whatever and tell them to look at a bus or go. And then it would be up to the locals to decide whether they wanted to go that has changed. One of the more effective ways in which this is happening now, one of the ways in which evacuations have become more streamlined. There's more coordination between the police, the states, administrations and charities.

27:28But the danger is much bigger now because of the drones. They're getting more lethal, they're getting smarter. A lot of them use AI. If they hear a buzzing noise, they know they've got to run for cover. For example, Vlad Mahovsky from Zaparijsia says that he knows when glide bombs are about to be launched. So they find a reasonably safe spot and just wait for the danger to pass and then go and evacuate people. With FPV drones, you just have to accept that they can appear out of nowhere. If it's raining, it helps against FPV drones. So when it's raining heavily, that's when volunteers know they've got a better chance of surviving. What has this story taught you, whether it's about the state of affairs, nature of war or human nature?

28:34When you are faced with the need to make life and death decisions, you start thinking about who you are, what you live for and how you want to live your life. So both people living in the frontline still and volunteers and police officers risking their lives to save them. A lot of them decided that life is not just about comfort, food, drink, money. What makes us humans is to a huge extent helping others, helping others survive. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. Thank you to Vitaly Shifchenko and to the evacuators who shared their stories. And thank you for listening. This program was produced by Krista Shatteri and me, Krassi Ivanovich.

29:35The sound engineer is Donald McDonald. And if you want to find out more about BBC Monitoring, you can do so by visiting our website, monitoring.bbc.co.uk. Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, add free, with an Amazon Music subscription.