Putting themselves in harm’s way to rescue residents who have not left their homes as the Russian army approaches—that’s how one might sum up the work of the rescue workers operating just behind the front lines in the Donetsk Oblast. Among them are the White Angels, a police unit specializing in the evacuation of civilians and families with children. Fools to some, heroes to most—our correspondent met them in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
In the Donetsk Oblast, the noose is tightening from all sides. To the east, Siversk fell in December. To the south, for months now, Russian troops have seemed determined to raze Kostiantynivka rather than capture it, which portends the worst. To the north, fighting is already underway on the outskirts of Lyman. Most residents have made their own way from the area. In Sloviansk and Kramatorsk—the last two cities in the oblast still controlled by Kyiv—it is still possible to do so. Coaches are still running, and a few more or less safe roads currently allow people to reach the rest of free Ukraine; but as one gets closer to the front lines, the situation changes. More than anywhere else in the oblast, FPV drones are flying, bombs are falling, and artillery is striking. Public transportation, which often continued to operate beyond all expectations, has finally been suspended. For the remaining residents—who don’t always have a car, who are sometimes injured, elderly, or disabled, or who have stayed behind with their children—realizing that they’ve reached their limit for tolerating risk is one thing. Being able to leave without being targeted is another. It is under these circumstances that the White Angels step in.
Born out of urgency, endorsed by the state
“One shot, one drone” – and a shotgun. The patch that Pavlo Diatchenko, the White Angels’ press officer for the oblast, wears on his fanny pack, sums up his unit’s working conditions well. Despite their civilian status, explains Pavlo Diatchenko, 42, whom I meet on a terrace in Sloviansk, officers are regularly targeted by FPV drone pilots or by artillery. Armored vehicles, drone detectors and jammers, bulletproof vests, heavy helmets, military first-aid kits… and shotguns loaded with buckshot—the best way to shoot down FPV drones as a last resort—make up their arsenal. In addition, our host points out, specialized training is essential. “We use augmented-reality headsets that simulate various drone attack scenarios, which you must try to shoot down,” he explains, before freezing. “Someone fired a shot.” Seemingly relaxed, Diatchenko remains on guard. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are also within range of Russian drones. In a split second, he detected a sound I had missed. His eyes darted toward the café door, then in my direction. Detecting danger, identifying a safe haven. That reflex speaks volumes.
“The name was given to us by the people, by the children,” he continues calmly. It all began in early 2022, with the decision by a group of police officers to volunteer to evacuate the population of Marinka, a town on the outskirts of Donetsk, which was then on the front lines. “They were given a white ambulance and a white car. They evacuated a large number of civilians, the wounded, and even the dead,” he recalls, chain-smoking after politely asking if I didn’t mind. Since then, faced with the Russian army’s relentless advance in the oblast and the growing risks to civilians and rescue workers, the group of volunteers has become an official unit, whose members are still recruited “on a voluntary basis” from within the police force. The initiative has even been replicated in other oblasts.
Evacuations and Search Operations Amid Russian Strikes
Having sketched out this general picture, he suggests we continue the interview in Kramatorsk, where, he explains, I’ll be able to meet “another White Angel”. I’d walked here. Diatchenko offers to drive me to my car. Just as we’re about to leave the café, a horse rider arrives at a somewhat uncontrolled gallop, a branch in his hand. Behind the wheel of a pickup truck, a soldier honks his horn. The horse bolts. Everyone bursts out laughing. Here, people focus on what matters most. Minutes later, I discover that my interviewee is none other than the leader of the region’s White Angels, Lieutenant Colonel Hennadiy Yudin. We shake hands. He pulls his phone—which he’d likely been using to film me up until then—out of his chest holster. Security requires it: the Russian army is about fifteen kilometers away.
When asked how many people the oblast’s White Angels have managed to evacuate since 2022, Yudin replies without hesitation: “ 19,561 people, including 3,660 children. And the remains of 262 people. We’ve also carried out 1,232 medical evacuations, including those of four children and 19 wounded soldiers, all of whom were subsequently taken to medical facilities1. ” The statistics displayed on his phone, he explains, are updated weekly. Hennadiy says with a weary voice that the White Angels’ work focuses on communities around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and on some streets in the two cities. The regional military administration has ordered the mandatory evacuation of families with children from these areas, which means that the Ukrainian National Police may carry out the forced evacuation of under-age children there, even without their legal guardians, should the guardians refuse to accompany them. In such cases—which remain rare, Yudin says—the minors are placed in the care of child protection services2.
To date, 318 children are reportedly still in areas subject to mandatory evacuation. As the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda noted in June, the number of such areas is, in fact, growing. For the 22 men and women who make up the region’s White Angels unit—nine of whom have been wounded—the task is delicate; especially since, in some cases, Yudin points out, “people hide their children” to prevent them from being evacuated. Amid killer drones and gliding bombs, police officers must therefore conduct their investigations. In other cases, he continues calmly, “some families sneak back home after being evacuated…” This latter situation, he explains, occurred again on June 30 in Druzhkivka, a town south of Kramatorsk where FPV drones are rampant… even though it had taken police several weeks to track down the town’s last two children.
Engaging with the Absurd or How to Convince Stragglers
Why, in the face of an advancing deadly threat, wait until the very last moment to leave one’s home? Why even sneak back into these places doomed to ruin? Those who have ever taken part in evacuation efforts have asked themselves such questions on numerous occasions, in circumstances involving varying degrees of adrenaline and, at times, a touch of exasperation. Part of the answer lies in the fact that the danger is increasing almost as slowly as the Russian army is advancing. In the oblast, since the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2022, Kremlin troops have advanced by a few dozen kilometers at most. As a result, residents have plenty of time to normalize the risks, even to extreme degrees.
And then, there are other reasons: meager pensions for retirees whose homes and vegetable gardens constitute their only wealth; a refusal to spend one’s final days in an unfamiliar shelter; Russian propaganda accusing White Angels of kidnapping children or organ trafficking3; weariness from exile, which some have already experienced since the first Donbas war; hope—tinged with denial—that the war will stop at the edge of their garden; pro-Russian views or political indifference coupled with a lack of clarity… Because waking up unharmed or with a livable home on the other side of the front line remains highly unlikely. Marinka, Soledar, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Siversk, Kostiantynivka… All these towns, from which the White Angels have helped evacuate people, have been devastated. So, as Yudin explains, when words aren’t enough, “we try to [convince residents] by showing them videos. We show them that some people who stayed behind were wounded or even killed, to get them to understand […] that they should evacuate to prevent the same thing from happening to them.” Their method is direct. It has the merit of avoiding misunderstandings.
Patience and Gratitude
Overcoming denial or complacency, especially in an emergency, is no easy task. Sometimes it’s only after a tragic event—one that shatters their complacency—that the holdouts finally change their minds. “We’ve been through this situation several times,” explains Hennadiy Yudin, who had to evacuate his own mother-in-law at the very last minute from Avdiivka in January 2024. “We go to people’s homes, try to convince them, and they say ‘no.’ Then, at night, their house is bombed, someone is killed… The next day, they call us back to say, ‘Please, evacuate us—it doesn’t make sense to stay here anymore!’” In other cases, the opposite scenario plays out. In March, Diatchenko recalls, his team received an evacuation request from two elderly women in Dobropillia, another town south of Kramatorsk. “The situation was dire. There were too many FPV drones in the town. We had to park on the outskirts and walk to their house,” he explains. He adds that he walked nearly four kilometers on high alert, trying to move forward under cover, street by street, only to finally reach the two women… who had changed their minds. A classic scenario. Two explosions ring out. We order another coffee.
While the work of the White Angels requires, in many ways, nerves of steel, it at least has the advantage of being meaningful. During the summer of 2023, Hennadiy Yudin recalls, “we had an evacuation in Avdiivka. We were looking for a child. People had taken refuge in the basement of an ATB [Editor’s note: a supermarket chain]. We found the child there, along with a woman holding a three-year-old girl by the hand. They weren’t on the list. They had hidden under a staircase: the family had dug a hole there so they wouldn’t be found, because they knew people might be looking for them. We managed to convince the woman to leave […], and we entrusted her to volunteers. They helped her get a passport and some money… She left [with her daughter] for Helsinki, Finland.” In late January 2024, shortly before the Russian army took the city, the officer said, a glide bomb struck the supermarket, which the young woman’s mother and brother had refused to evacuate. The estimated death toll, since it was impossible to recover the bodies: approximately 18. “She called me to ask if there was any way to find out what had happened to her brother and mother,” Yudin continues. “I think they were buried under the rubble. That’s the story. She thanked us for getting her out of there. It was a good thing […]. I’m not even sure the Russians have cleared the rubble.”
Wounds Beneath the Armor
The atmosphere in the oblast, marked by the ever-present shadow of death, is grueling. Death, moreover, isn’t just that of strangers, of children who could not be rescued in time, or of colleagues. Many of the White Angels are originally from the oblast. Like many residents, they, too, are mourning the loss of loved ones. Sometime in 2023, Pavlo Diatchenko —a native of Kostiantynivka—recalls that his mother’s former partner passed away. This man, he explains in a somewhat trembling voice, had “raised him like a son”. He was in excellent physical shape; but he “took things too much to heart”. The outbreak of the war, he says, devastated him; and even more so the bombings, including at the Kostiantynivka market in September 2023, where he ran a business4. “We lived 200 meters apart,” the police officer recalls, “but I couldn’t find the time to go see him. I was coming home from hell. For months, I went on one mission after another. I’d come home exhausted, with someone’s blood on my clothes. I’d throw some laundry in the machine, wake up in the morning, and head out on another mission.” One day, finally, he managed to visit his father-in-law—only to find him looking unusually tired. “I didn’t see the cancer coming… I blame myself for that,” he explains matter-of-factly. Today, Pavlo continues, even the grave of his loved one has become inaccessible to him. His father-in-law is buried in Kostiantynivka, which is on the front lines.
As for Hennadiy Yudin, it was when I asked him if being a father might have motivated him to join the White Angels that I realized the weight resting on his shoulders. “My whole family is from Avdiivka; my wife is from Avdiivka. Our eldest daughter lives in Warsaw, Poland. My wife […] lives in the Kyiv region. I’m here, in Kramatorsk,” he replies, suddenly tense. He lets a sob out. “It’s hard to talk… Our other daughter—she was 13… Her heart couldn’t take it… ” At this point, the 49-year-old man with a sturdy build and a firm grip can no longer hold back the tears. Yet he continues his story—difficult to follow, broken up—to explain that one night in 2022, his wife and youngest daughter endured a terrible bombing; and that in the morning, his daughter did not wake up. “That’s her, right here,” he says, pointing to the tattoo on his forearm.
Following that event, he continues, regaining his composure, he and his wife decided to adopt a child, completed the required training, and armed themselves with patience. Until that day in 2024, when the local government of a municipality now located in an occupied zone asked him to take a toddler who was being abused out of her home. “Today, the child is part of our family […],” says Hennadiy, explaining that he and his wife were granted custody as a foster family. “She was a year and three days old. Now she’s already two years and eleven months. She’s growing up and has given meaning to our lives,” he finally says, showing me a video of a healthy, blonde little girl running toward him with outstretched arms5. Smiles in this report, at last.
Coordination on All Fronts
Fortunately, the White Angels aren’t alone. To provide police officers with the information they need for their missions, all public services—from local police units to the regional administration—are mobilizing. “There’s also the State Emergency Service [the equivalent of the fire department], volunteers, the military administration… They, too, have armored vehicles; we cooperate with them [on the ground]. There are a lot of people involved,” explains Pavlo, while Hennadiy begins a long list of organizations whose unique names reflect the extreme conditions in which their volunteers operate: “Breath of Hope, the Chaplains’ Patrol, God’s Volunteers, etc. ” The two men take part in evacuations and, as such, have been decorated several times.
“At first,” recalls Pavlo, “residents would call every [emergency] number in a panic; and sometimes we’d all end up at the same address. We now work closely together to coordinate who’s going where.” “Furthermore,” Hennadiy adds, “we have a direct phone line where people can reach us […] and we have an app: Kryla [“Wings,” in Ukrainian]. If someone calls the line, we receive a notification. The app was specially developed by volunteers to improve coordination of the evacuation process. All volunteer organizations have access to it. You can see the status of a request there: processed, being processed, etc.”
The White Angels, the officer explains, systematically take on the riskiest routes, and their staff are sometimes targeted.
On June 25, in Droujkivka, volunteers from the “Route of Life” project—led by the Kramatorsk Old Town Community association—were targeted by an FPV drone, despite the word “Evacuation” painted in large white letters against a black background on their vehicle. The pilot’s intention was clear: the drone crashed into the windshield. Fortunately, the windshield was made of bulletproof glass. The two drivers and their passengers escaped virtually unscathed. This is the second time since the beginning of the year that one of the association’s vans has been struck by a drone, Oleksii Kotchetov, one of the volunteers taking part in the mission, explained over the phone. The White Angels, Hennadiy Yudin adds, also cooperate with the soldiers. The areas closest to the front line are inaccessible to vehicles, even armored ones. If the remaining residents decide to leave, they must do so on foot. When this happens, Yudin explains, the military tries to alert his organization so that stranded people can be picked up at a safer distance from the front line—if they survive the journey.
Antoine Laurent is a freelance journalist. A contributor to the Swiss bimonthly Echo Magazine, the Italian media Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa, and other publications on a more ad hoc basis (Le Courrier de Genève, Linkiesta, etc.).
Footnotes
- These figures are as of June 28, 2026.
- This procedure is governed by law. For more information, see, for example, Ukrainska Pravda and Babel (here and here).
- On this propaganda, disseminated by Russia through social media (Telegram channels, for example) and on the radio, see, for example, the article published by the Ukrainian media outlet Vtchasno or the fact sheets available on the EUvsDisinfo website (here and here).
- In Ukraine, markets are often partly housed in permanent structures.
- Lieutenant Colonel Yudin gave a more detailed account of this episode in an interview with the Kramatorsk Post.