«Under stress, they yelled for us to take them home»: the evacuation of people with limited mobility from frontline cities

Requests to evacuate people with limited mobility from frontline cities have increased severalfold. The «wave» of retirees and people with disabilities is reaching its peak: 25 or more people are being evacuated every day. Most of them are in a state of grief acknowledgment: everything they worked and lived for is left behind. Amid the bombings, they leave behind their belongings, their homes, and the final resting places of their loved ones. So what are they thinking as they are about to be taken to safety, and what issues concern the volunteers the most—in a report by «Vchasno.»

Until very recently, the city of Druzhkivka was a different place. We reported on life there in August 2025—at that time, despite the Russian missile strikes, none of the locals were planning to leave. The streets were full of people; some were rushing to work, some were drinking coffee, and others were simply walking their dogs. At that time, the front line was more than 25 km away, and people hoped that it would not reach Druzhkivka.

The situation changed rapidly a few months later when the occupiers advanced toward neighboring Kostiantynivka, and drones easily began to reach Druzhkivka. Today, the gray zone is already 17 km from the city. And enemy pressure on the front has intensified several times over in their desire to capture the Donetsk region. Currently, the occupiers are terrorizing the Druzhkivka area around the clock—destroying everything and killing everyone in their path.

«We need to return to Drizhkivka — we forgot my teeth in the apartment»

Several ambulances and volunteer vans are parked in front of the evacuation center in Kramatorsk—all the crews are waiting for their low mobility or elderly passengers to take them to a safer region. In one of the evacuation vehicles, 79-year-old Zoya Mikhailovna and her husband, who have just been evacuated from Druzhkivka, are quietly talking. Tears well up in the woman’s eyes: in addition to everything she has accumulated over her lifetime, her dentures were left behind in the abandoned apartment. Getting new ones is a long, expensive, and extremely difficult process given her condition. Moreover, she had her leg amputated a few years ago, so now the pensioner can only get around in a wheelchair.

«We need to get back to Druzhkivka. Is there anybody who can take us there?.. My teeth are still there. We need to get them», — grandma laments.

The volunteers she has already informed are themselves looking for ways to return the prosthetics: they’re calling colleagues who went to the evacuation, women’s neighbors, and trying to coordinate between those two groups. They’re doing everything they can to keep the retired couple from worrying. As years of evacuation experience show, this kind of stress pushes people toward problematic decisions. For example, returning to the shelling they had just been rescued from.

Still, within a few minutes, a solution is found: a neighbor who stayed behind to watch over the couple’s home will bring the dentures to the volunteers. They’ll deliver them in an hour, and until then, the couple will have to wait near the evacuation center. Zoya Mikhailovna calms down a little, but tears remain in her eyes. Throughout the years of the full-scale invasion, she had hoped that the war would stop without affecting her hometown of Druzhkivka. And now she has to flee from russian drones.

«The walls in our home were penetrated, the roof is damaged. There are no windows — they’ve all been blown out. They’re shooting at us day and night. I haven’t gone outside because I can’t walk on my own — I get around only in a wheelchair. I stayed in my apartment, so I didn’t see what Druzhkivka had been reduced to. When the volunteers came to pick us up and we drove through the city — I was horrified. Everything is destroyed, burned down, there are no houses left—they've been demolished», — says pensioner.

The woman wipes away her tears: she still can’t believe that the war is forcing her to leave her home. Until now, she had loved living in Druzhkivka, where she had spent her entire life. She worked as a constructor at the local machine-building plant and later managed the workshops. She met her husband, gave birth to a daughter. The graves of her parents and relatives remain there. Leaving is not just difficult — it is painful.

«That's where our home is… Everything we’d worked so hard to build—we left it all behind. We were only able to take two suitcases and my wheelchair. And we’re getting old: my husband is 80, and I’ll soon be 79. We’d hoped the war would end any day now», — sobbingly says Zoya Mikhailovna.

Now she and her husband will be living with her sister and brother-in-law in Kovel, in the Volyn Oblast. She has only been there once. And now she is leaving, doubting that she will ever return home.

Valentina Ivanivna, 76, is waiting by a nearby car «for pick up». She says that people in Druzhkivka aren’t living anymore — they’re just surviving. That’s why she agreed to be evacuated. She’s heading to her granddaughter’s place, where she is already waiting in Novomyrhorod.

The woman is also unable to get around on her own — she can only move about in a wheelchair — so she hasn’t seen what the occupiers have done to the city. The street where her house is located has not yet suffered any serious damage from the airstrikes.

«Our street hasn’t been destroyed yet, but Shaheds keeps us awake. Bombs are flying, people are leaving. Very few of them are left. There are only two stores, one pharmacy for the whole city. And even there, there are no medicines — my daughter had to send them by mail», — says pensioner.

In Druzhkivka, she left behind her house and her son’s apartment. She says she regrets losing everything she’d accumulated—she managed to take only a bag with some belongings and bedding. Volunteers also took the wheelchair. The pensioner doesn’t know how she’ll manage from here on out, but she takes comfort in the fact that her granddaughter will be nearby. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have dared to leave.

«It's almost impossible to carry a grandmother who weighs nearly hundredweight»: hidden challenges with evacuating people with limited mobility

According to the latest data from the Pension Fund of Ukraine, there are currently approximately 135,000−145,000 pensioners remaining in the unoccupied territory of Donetsk Oblast. Approximately 12−15% of those who remain (about 15,000−18,000 people) are people with disabilities or elderly inpiduals with limited mobility who cannot evacuate without assistance.

Only a fraction of Donetsk residents are evacuating on their own, without the help of volunteers or the «White Angels» police units. But tens of thousands of people aged 60 and older will, traditionally, delay their departure, until the journey becomes a deadly risk for those who dare to undertake it.

Yevgeny Tkachov, head of the «Proliska» humanitarian mission in the Donetsk region, explains: evacuations from Druzhkivka and Oleksievo-Druzhkivka are still possible today, but it is impossible to predict how many days or weeks this will last. After the russians attacked a vehicle during an evacuation and killed a pensioner inside, russian media reported that «Proliska» was on their blacklist. That’s why they start hunting down the volunteers as soon as an enemy drone spots them. Under these conditions (and with such «warning»), every trip is literally a game of russian roulette. But instead of a single bullet — the revolver is fully loaded.

«The riskiest part of an evacuation is getting there and leaving while the russians are targeting you with everything they’ve got. But the challenge of rescuing people with limited mobility or who are immobile lies precisely in the process of loading them into the vehicle. To avoid taking risks, we drive with only one or two people per crew. So getting an elderly man or woman who weighs nearly hundredweight into the car is a problem. And there’s no one to ask for help, because the whole street is empty.», — Yevgeny Tkachov explains.

Elderly and frail people rarely call the volunteers. Most requests come from neighbors or military personnel who notice them.

There have been no refusals to evacuate in Druzhkivka yet. But this is only temporary—the worse the situation gets, the more people will insist on staying home. Even if it means certain death.

The most recent instances of people refusing to leave occurred in Kostiantynivka in December. At the time, there was no communication, so it was impossible to verify whether people actually wanted to leave, but their relatives promised that their belongings were packed and their cat was in a carrier. We arrive—people are in shock. They shout, «I was born here, and I’ll die here.» But in Druzhkivka, this hasn’t happened yet. Sometimes people ask to postpone the evacuation for a few days. But as long as there’s communication in the city, and utility workers and medical staff are present—such cases will be few and far between. But the more terrifying and dire the situation becomes, the more refusals there will be", — tells Yevgeny Tkachov.

Sometimes people refuse to evacuate from areas under fire, citing the experiences of those who have already left. But there’s a catch: over the course of six months, a single story gets passed along to 150 people, each of whom changes the «feedback. And if in the original story the evacuated family said they weren’t fed on time, by the end people are saying that they even took their kidneys, Tkachov laughs ironically. People don’t want to leave, so they look for any reason. So they’ll either find an excuse or make one up.

There is an increasing number of people with injuries, amputations, heart attacks, and carbon monoxide poisoning

Currently, 23 to 28 people are consistently being evacuated for medical treatment every day — mostly from the Druzhkivka and Sloviansk areas.

«The number of people with disability has risen sharply recently. These include cases of recent injuries, amputations, heart attacks, and carbon monoxide poisoning. In addition, we are transporting patients who have been stabilized in intensive care units in the Donetsk Oblast», — says Teyana, paramedic on a medical evacuation vehicle,

The woman notes that the stress does not end with the evacuation from the «gray zone» or the frontline territory — it is only beggins. Leaving one’s comfort zone — even if it is deadly dangerous — is a challenge for people with limited mobility or pensioners. They are unsure whether they will return, how and where they will live tomorrow. Therefore, the medical evacuation team’s task is not only to monitor the passengers' vital signs but also to calm them down when the acute phase of stress begins.

«There were people who, under stress, yelled for us to take them home. Or when they’d arranged for housing but hadn’t seen it with their own eyes. As a result, we brought them there, they were disappointed by what they saw—and probles starts. Sometimes they’d ask us to bring them back, and then volunteers would „take them home“ — under shelling. Sometimes someone forgets something at home — and that’s also why they ask to return. But most important things — documents, phones, belongings — we check at every stage to make sure they’ve taken everything. If there’s still something important at home, neighbors can send it by mail, or volunteers will try to pick it up during the next evacuation, and we’ll bring it», — tells paramedic.

At the same time, every trip — whether to pick up people or to retrieve documents and belongings they had left behind — was a life-threatening venture under the «scope» of enemy drones. The crew Tetyana worked with had also been the target of criminal attacks. Nevertheless, the team reached their destination, asked for a chance to have some tea and get some rest, and the next day they were back on evacuation duty.

While we’re talking to Tetiana, volunteers bring in another family from Druzhkivka, where the husband is confined to a wheelchair. Tetiana immediately rushes to help—he needs to be loaded into the medical van and escorted on the rest of the way. The couple stayed in Druzhkivka until the very last moment, hoping the war would pass them by. Now they’re heading to the Kharkiv region.

Next to a few bags containing essential items, walks 12-year-old labrador Marcel. His owners took him with them during the evacuation, even though the dog is old and sick. He limps alongside his owner, not even realizing how lucky he is to have a family, since many people leave their pets behind during evacuations.

«My husband would have left everything behind in Druzhkivka — his belongings, some of his appliances, but not Marcel. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere without him. So we’re all evacuating together: me, my husband, Marcel, and our cat. We didn’t leave anyone behind, even though we took very few belongings with us», — sighs a resident of Druzhkivka, who is leaving behind not only her home, but almost her entire life.

Every successful evacuation of a family with children or people with limited mobility today represents a significant victory over the statistics of the dead and wounded. However, behind every evacuation lie the strained backs of volunteers, drone attacks that miraculously failed, and the lives of people who risk their own safety to pull others out of hell. The resources of those willing to load wheelchairs amid the buzzing of enemy FPVs are not unlimited. At the same time, the number of people in need of assistance runs into the tens of thousands in Donetsk Oblast alone. The region is rapidly turning into a land of inhabited basements, as that is the only place where Donetsk residents can try to survive. However, people with limited mobility have almost no chance for such a scenario.

A few days after the interviews we recorded for this report, a russian drone attacked an evacuation vehicle marked with the «Proliska» humanitarian mission logo, which was transporting pensioners from the Druzhkivka area. Two people were killed in the strike, and two other civilians were injured. And this is not the first or second russian attack on evacuation vehicles.

On April 3, Russian forces struck near an evacuation center in Kramatorsk with a guided aerial bomb. At the time of the strike, volunteers and pensioners with limited mobility were near the building. After receiving a warning of an impending airstrike, the evacuation crew, together with the «White Angel» police special unit, managed to move three evacuees behind the building’s wall. They did not have time to remove a non-mobile patient from the vehicle. The guided bomb struck near the evacuation point. People suffered acoustic trauma, acute stress reactions, and injuries from glass shattered by the blast wave. This time, there were no casualties.