October 30th, 2025
69,421 people evacuated from danger to date
66 people evacuated from danger this week
34 trips into deoccupied and frontline territories this week
Advanes in drone techonogy have created a new and deadly reality in the Russo-Ukrainian war. While the frontline has not moved much, the so-called gray zones around the active front have been expanding. These are areas where enemy drones can strike at any time.
Last week, the ring road around Kharkiv was closed for the first time due to the detection of enemy FPV drones. Massive airstrikes continue to pummel the city. The rising tensions have caused a renewed surge in evacuations.
Our volunteers are doing everything they can to respond to these developments. Darya, a selfless and heroic volunteer from Kharkiv, evacuated 25 people last week from villages less than a mile away from the frontline. Inna’s team has started firewood distributions in the remote villages of the Kharkiv Region. Her team, along with two others continue to deliver aid to villages whose supply routes might be compromised when winter comes. All in all, we are preparing for a difficult winter, perhaps the most difficult one to date.
Your donations have made the work of Darya, Inna, and a network of nearly 1,000 other individuals across Ukraine possible. As the giving season approaches, we are once again organizing our Holiday Match Drive — a tradition that brings our Ukraine TrustChain community together.
We’re inviting a few donors to help seed the match fund as sponsors. If you are planning a year-end gift of $1,000 or more, your sponsorship can double the power of every donation and inspire others to join. To learn more, please email donate@ukrainetrustchain.org with “Match Drive Sponsor” in the subject line.
Stories
The Cave People of Kherson
For over two years, the residents of two multistory buildings in a dangerous neighborhood of Kherson have been living communally in large, unfinished basements. Alena and her team Virgo traveled there from Odesa to deliver aid to these residents.
Getting to Kherson was difficult — the road from Odesa to the city is getting more dangerous by the day. This time, the team had to obtain lots of documentation from the military command to enter the city and then wait 40 minutes at a checkpoint before entering a “net corridor” (a road protected from drones by overhanging nets). This is the latest tactic to try to save the cars on the road from the drones above.
After arriving at the site, Alena was met by some of the residents who gave her a tour of the basements. Not much surprises these seasoned volunteers, but the living situation of these “cave people,” as one resident ironically refers to the community, obviously shocked Alena.
The people who remain in the neighborhood are mostly elderly or disabled. They live in a warren of unfinished concrete crannies and passages with no windows and little privacy. Pipes and wiring run directly overhead. There is electricity and water, as well as a small kitchen, but no toilet. Residents use chamber pots and plastic buckets to relieve themselves. Most shockingly, in order to empty the buckets, a person must climb an unstable wooden stepladder and then pour the waste into a small opening in the swer pipe, which passes overhead, near the ceiling.
Still, the community does what it can to support its members and celebrate holidays. The organizer even showed Alena where the residents had put up a holiday tree last winter. In the words of one resident: “Our lives are very complicated — very! They’re shooting at us, and everything else. But we do our best to live anyway. We support one another, becuse we have to live. And we do live!”
Soldier Sends Family to Safety
The evacuation story that stands out for Dobra sprava’s Ihor this week is that of Snezhana and her two energetic and bright children: five-year-old David, and two-year-old Solomiya. Snezhana’s husband is a soldier on active duty at the front, who couldn’t accompany his family to safety. Everyone in the family cried when they said their goodbyes. Solimiya cried most, unable to understand why daddy could’t come with them. David was so angry with his dad that he refused to hug him, also unable to grasp why he was staying behind. Snezhana understood the situation very well, not knowing when she would see her husband again, or whether she would see him at all. Fortunately, everyone calmed down a bit during the ride and the family arrived at their destination in a more positive mood.
Help in Occupied Territories
84 packages were distributed in occupied territories.
Team Summaries
Alina’s Team – Dobra sprava (Good Deeds)
10 trips, evacuating 41 people, 11 of them children, primarily from Druzhkivka and Oleksijevo-Druzhkivka.
UTC sponsored RED devices that have been installed on team’s vehicles to detect the approach of enemy drones.
Inna’s Team – Krok z nadiyeyu (Step with Hope)
68 tons of firewood delivered to Kharkiv Region villages of Kamenna Yaruha, Khotimlya, Mos’panove, and Pechenihy.
21.2 tons of aid delivered to 8,150 people.
6,600 people received bread.
Kherson's team disinfected 2 large bomb shelters, and closed up blown-out windows in 1 apartment.
Delivered fuel and bread to 25 people in the red zones of Kherson.
Aid delivered to Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Slaviansk.
Oleksandr D’s Volunteer Networks
Vladyslav K. (Mykolaiv): delivered 35 tons of water to Mykolaiv.
Yuri S. (Vinnytsia): twice, sent food to disabled people in Kyiv and Poltava. Twice, delivered food to 20 people at the “Safe Space” homeless night shelter in Vinnytsia.
Vitaliy Z. (Kharkiv): delivered 3.5 tons of humanitarian kits, clothes, medicine, and animal feed to Ivankivka, near Kramatorsk. Brought over 500 loaves of “Victory” bread to Kramatorsk.
Alla A. (Kremenets’): distributed 45 food certificates worth 500 UAH each. Provided psychological support to 15 people. Assisted a large family with half-orphaned children in the city of Shums’k. Assistance included certificates for 3,000 UAH and a high chair for a disabled child. Purchased food and hygiene products and provided a wheelchair for a disabled woman living alone in the village of Hrada, in the Kremenets’ territorial community. Distributed clothing, shoes and children’s toys to 38 people visiting the team’s 2 permanent distribution points. Provided food certificates to 3 families (13 people) raising disabled children in the Odesa Region. Conducted a health and psychological support program over the course of 10 evenings, attended by 15-25 people, mostly internally displaced persons (IDPs). Helped repair a house for a large family with a bedridden husband. Helped bury a disabled child from an IDP family. Specialists from the “Resilience” project and volunteers visited residents at a shelter to provide encouragement and support. The shelter residents also received certificates to the ATB supermarket.
WeCare Centers (Lviv): delivered a total of 3 tons of yogurts, purees and baby porridge to Khmelnytskyi, Uman, and Odesa.
Oleksandr D. (Lutsk):volunteer Vadym brought 500 kg of vegetables, stoves, and fire extinguishers from Kamin’-Kashyrs’kyi to Inna’s team Krok z nadiyeyu in Dnipro, for further distribution to refugees there.
Oleksandr Z. (Lutsk): provided therapeutic interventions and aid to IDP children and families, children with disabilities, children from large families and from military families, orphans, elderly people, military service members, and amputees in Lutsk and villages of the Rivne Region. 802 children and adults received help, including art therapy classes, training in pottery which may lead to young people establishing their own businesses, help with bread and other food, outings to a museum, help with glasses, medical and preventive procedures – including a “medical mobile trailer,” which traveled to remote locations in the Rivne Region to conduct physiotherapeutic procedures for IDPs – and help with the manufacture of prostheses and rehabilitation.
Kseniia’s Team – Livyy bereh (Left Bank)
Over the last 2 weeks Darya managed to evacuate 25 people from 6 frontline villages near Kup’yans’k, which are located less than a mile away from Russian positions.
Karina’s Team – My ryatuyemo Ukrayinu (We Save Ukraine)
109 people in the shelter, 55 of them long term.
Tetiana’s Team – Dopomoha poruch (Help Is Near)
Distributed 100 aid packages in Zaporizhzhia.
Delivered 140 aid packages to the village of Bohatyrivka, Zaporizhzhia Region.
Natasha’s Team – Volontersʹkyy tsentr Vyshnya (Cherry Volunteer Center)
The team is preparing for 2 trips to the Kherson and Lyman areas.
Timur’s Team – Komanda Teymura Alyeva (Timur Alyev’s Team)
Delivered aid packages to 313 seniors.
Special deliveries to 19 families with infants and 13 disabled elderly.
Pavel and Olena’s Teams – Dotyk sertsya (Touch of Heart) & Svitanok mriy (Dawn of Dreams)
Delivered aid to 356 families (1,068 people, including 300 kids) in Kobzartsi and Afanasiivka.
Conducted 2 events for parents and children at the Mykolaiv office.
Pomahaem Foundation (We Help Foundation)
430 people passed through Volos’ke temporary shelter.
Multiple trips last week to high-risk zones.
167 packages delivered to villages near Kup’yans’k.
117 packages delivered to Derhachi in the gray zone near Kharkiv.
21 packages delivered to Marhanets’.
72 packages delivered to shelters in Dnipropetrovsk Region.
Marina’s Team – Daruy dobro Ukrayina (Give Good Ukraine)
150 food and hygiene packages were distributed to internally displaced people in P’yatykhatky.
Dina’s Team – Vilʹni lyudy, vilʹna krayina (Free People, Free Country)
Distributed 530 packages in Poltava, Kanev, Kremenchuk, Krasnokutsk, and Dnipro.
Served 1,460 meals in the soup kitchen in Kharkiv.
Bohdan’s Team — Vse robymo sami (We Do Everything Ourselves)
42 families in Zhytomyr received food and hygiene kits.
At the Club for Children with Disabilities, children went on 2 field trips, and attended art and culinary classes.
Alena’s Team – Diva (Virgo)
Helped 38 wounded in the hospital.
Delivered 136 packages of aid to Kherson.
How to Help
Donate — The money goes directly to teams providing aid on the ground, who respond dynamically to the most urgent needs.
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Fill out this form if you’re interested in volunteering with us, and we’ll let you know when opportunities come up.
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