September 4th, 2025
68,978 people evacuated from danger to date
73 people evacuated from danger this week
42 trips into deoccupied and frontline territories this week
We sometimes end a fundraising or event speech with the words “Don’t forget about Ukraine!” This is more than a cliché; it is incredibly important that despite all the other challenges in our lives we remember what is going on in Ukraine every day.
Ukraine TrustChain was recently contacted by the creators of the new documentary Checkpoint Zoo, who asked for our help in promoting this film. Checkpoint Zoo (produced by Leonardo DiCaprio) has recently debuted in select theaters around the US. This film tells the story of the animals and staff of Feldman Ecopark, a wildlife sanctuary and therapeutic center located near Kharkiv. In the first days of the Russian invasion, as fighting raged around the trapped and frightened animals, volunteers and employees of the sanctuary risked their lives to bring thousands of animals to safety.
In these early days of the war, UTC’s Ukrainian teams were also responding to the crisis, distributing food to people hiding in subway stations, and driving buses full of early evacuees, along with their pets. Our volunteers have not stopped and have evacuated tens of thousands of people and animals from danger since the start of the invasion. Whether you have a chance to see the Checkpoint Zoo, or read this newsletter regularly as your primary connection to the country, please don’t forget about Ukraine.
Stories
Navigating the Dangerous M14 Highway
The M14 highway, a major corridor that runs from Odesa to Kherson, remains one of the most dangerous routes in Southern Ukraine. Drone warfare here is relentless. Along the most dangerous stretches of the highway between Mykolaiv and Kherson, vehicles now drive through “anti-drone canopies.” These are metal mesh structures supported by poles that form partial tunnels. The improvised barriers are meant to break up the line of sight of FPV drones, making it harder for them to lock onto or dive at a vehicle. Some sections of the canopies are also reinforced with camouflage netting, but many section remain unfinished and offer only limited protection.
When Alena of the Virgo team set out from Odesa in the morning with Konstantin, her bus driver, planning to deliver aid to Kherson, both volunteers felt like tightly wound strings. Neither had been able to sleep the night before, weighed down by the nervous tension of preparing to cross the most dangerous stretch of road.
Alena and Konstantin drove at more than 75 mph in a fully loaded bus, racing through the half-finished mesh tunnels. Here the danger was at its highest. The sense of urgency was even greater because, the day before the team’s trip, several cars had been attacked and burned completely on that same section of highway. The locals on the other side, who had been cut off from aid for two weeks, had been waiting and praying for the team to arrive safely — and their prayers were answered.
After completing the nerve-wrecking drive, Alena and Konstantin faced another challenge. Their aid distribution point was organized in a residential area, between houses and garages. It was a risky location, regularly targeted by artillery and drones. However, here too, the team was lucky. On this day, only distant shots and explosions could be heard. The volunteers were able to deliver aid quickly and without incident and were soon on their way.
Volos’ke Shelter Reopening
Readers who have followed us since the early days of the war might remember the first shelter we supported. Located in the village of Volos’ke, near Dnipro, in a local school building, it was run by the dedicated team led by Andriy Pinchuk. The shelter provided three meals a day, medical services, and childcare to its residents. During its time of operation, from the start of the Russian invasion, to August 2023, the shelter housed a total of 4,523 people, with up to 300 people staying at at the center at any given time.
Sadly, since the start of the recent bombardments of the Dnipropetrovsk Region, the stream of refugees has once again picked up, leading to an acute shortage of shelter space throughout Ukraine. In response, Andryiy’s Pomahaem team has dusted off its old playbook and has reopened the Volos’e shelter. The current plan is to run the facility as a transit center, not designed for permanent lodging. After just two weeks of work, 246 people have stayed at the shelter as of the end of last week, reflecting the scale of the larger crisis playing out near the Dnipropetrovsk frontline.
Not without the Sofa
The following report from Ruslan — a volunteer on Inna’s team — who continues to take weekly trips to the Donbas. You can sense the frustration in his story:
You invite people to evacuate, you plead with them, you persuade them. And some of them leave, but only at the very last moment. When everything is already gone. No water, no gas, no electricity, no way to get there anymore. Then they ask: come, evacuate us.
Recently a person paid $1,200 to be evacuated by some crooks. Why? Because no one else was willing to come anymore. Especially under the conditions that she had set. She wanted to be evacuated with her son, but she also wanted to take the sofa, most importantly, you understand, the sofa. This sofa - without the sofa, there's just no life possible.
[I say to them] “Leave — a car will evacuate you for free. If you need an ambulance, the car will bring you to the ambulance and the ambulance will take you where you need to go. And you'll save money and buy a sofa. How much does a sofa cost, and how much did the trip cost?”
Dobra Sprava and White Angels Joint Evacuation
This week, Ihor received an urgent request for an evacuation from the village of Drobysheve in the Lyman community. An elderly woman named Lyudmyla, who had herself been evacuated a month earlier, called him in tears. She begged for help for her neighbors — two elderly women and one elderly man who had stayed behind. Drobysheve is now less than three kilometers from enemy positions, and going there had become a deadly gamble.
When Ihor shared the request with his team, everyone strongly advised against attempting the trip. Still, he set out. At a checkpoint in Brusylivka, police officers stopped him and warned that it was no longer possible to drive into Drobysheve in a regular vehicle. As they spoke, an armored vehicle of the White Angels police unit pulled up, fresh from rescuing three civilians who were badly wounded when an FPV drone had struck their car just minutes earlier. The officers told Ihor with a heavy sigh: “You can’t go there anymore.”
But Ihor couldn’t forget the three elderly neighbors waiting for help. He approached the White Angels, explained the situation, and gave them the addresses. Watching their armored vehicle disappear back toward the front, he was overcome with anxiety for the officers and for the vulnerable people still trapped in their homes.
An hour later, the armored truck reappeared at the checkpoint. When the doors opened, Ihor saw the three elderly evacuees, dirty, dressed in worn house clothes, but alive. The exhausted officers looked at him with faint smiles and said, “Take your people. All alive.”
Ihor drove the evacuees on to Sloviansk, where Lyudmyla was waiting. With tears in her eyes, she embraced her neighbors, holding them tightly for a long time.
Help in Occupied Territories
154 packages distributed in 4 occupied towns.
Team Summaries
Alina’s Team – Dobra sprava (Good Deeds)
Evacuated 56 people (6 of them children) over 13 trips to frontline regions.
Inna’s Team – Krok z nadiyeyu (Step with Hope)
8100 people received aid packages. 6600 people received bread.
21 tons of aid delivered to 30 locations, including 11 frontline areas.
Performed cleanup and infestation removal in 7 bomb shelters in Kherson.
Kherson's team also completed 14 targeted missions ranging from purchasing medicine, delivering generator fuel to dangerous areas to feeding dogs left behind by the owners.
Conducted children classes in Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka (Donbas).
Oleksandr D’s Volunteer Networks
Vladyslav K. (Mykolaiv): delivered 35 tons of water to Mykolaiv.
Sandra S (Odesa): report for 2 weeks. The kitchen handed out more than 820 portions of hot food, plus fresh salads for lunch and cold water and hibiscus to normalize blood pressure during the heat wave. Helped several families and lone pensioners with basic clothes, dishware, and small household items.
WeCare Centers (Lviv): delivered a total of 3 tons of food, clothing, and mattresses to Mykolaiv, Perekalki, Lutsk, Kyiv, Obukhiv, and Uman.
Vitaliy Z. (Kharkiv): organized a holiday lunch for displaced people (IDPs) near the Studentska metro station in the Saltivka neighborhood of Kharkiv. Almost 200 people attended and received aid and gifts in honor of Independence Day. Distributed almost 500 loaves of “Victory” bread in the deoccupied village of Zalyman, Izium District. Conducted an urgent evacuation from Oleksijevo-Druzhkivka, after a rocket hit a house full of people. Provided about 20 work uniforms to employees of the strategic enterprise Agronova.
Oleksandr D. (Lutsk): Oleksandr’s volunteer Vadym is still in the hospital. After his year at the front, he needs rehabilitation care at least twice a year. 2 weeks ago, the team delivered 50 kg of energy bars and muesli to a Kremenets’ rehabilitation center and kindergarten for children with disabilities and IDP children. Last week, 7 blind and partially sighted people received transportation to a church in the Rivne Region for a program for the visually impaired.
Oleksandr Z. (Lutsk): provided therapeutic interventions and aid to IDP children and families, children with disabilities, orphans, military veterans, and amputees in Lutsk, Ostrozhets’, Uizdtsi, Zalav’ya, Horodnytsya, and Malynivka (all in the Rivne Region). 1006 children and adults received help, including art therapy classes, help with bread and other food, a visit to a puppet theater, glasses, medical and preventive procedures – including a “medical mobile trailer,” which traveled to remote villages 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)
Darya, Kharkiv-based volunteer, evacuated 16 people taking 5 trips to Kutkivka, Kasyanivka, Kivsharivka, Petropavlivka and Podoly.
Delivered 186 packages.
Karina’s Team – My ryatuyemo Ukrayinu (We Save Ukraine)
Delivered 250 packages of aid to Vodyans'ke (small settlement just outside of Dobropillya.
91 people in the shelter in Dnipro, 59 of them long term.
Tetiana’s Team – Dopomoha poruch (Help Is Near)
Distributed 150 aid packages in Smila to newly displaced internal refugees.
Distributed 50 aid packages in Smila to old and disabled folks via the department of social services.
Natasha’s Team – Volontersʹkyy tsentr Vyshnya (Cherry Volunteer Center)
Tetiana from Kryvyi Rih, delivered 230 packages with hygienic products to frontline villages of Kherson region, to Khreshenivka, Shevchenkova and Petrivka.
60 children packages were distributed as well.
Timur’s Team – Komanda Teymura Alyeva (Timur Alyev’s Team)
Delivered aid to 311 seniors in Saltivka.
Special deliveries to 27 families with infants.
Distributed aid to single mothers for the first day of school.
Pavel and Olena’s Teams – Dotyk sertsya (Touch of Heart) & Svitanok mriy (Dawn of Dreams)
295 families received aid in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions in the villages of Myrne Novohryhorivka, Posad-Pokrovske.
Pomahaem Foundation (We Help Foundation)
24 tons delivered to Nikopol.
Delivered aid to the transit center in Voloske, currently housing 246 people.
12 packages distributed in Synelnykove district near Dnipro region frontline.
Marina’s Team – Daruy dobrо Ukrayina (Give Good Ukraine)
150 food and hygiene packages were distributed to internally displaced people in Piatykhatky.
Dina’s Team – Vilʹni lyudy, vilʹna krayina (Free People, Free Country)
Distributed 313 packages in Poltava, Kanev, Kremenchuk.
Served 1,600 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, kids had art and culinary classes.
Alena’s Team – Diva (Virgo)
Delivered 250 packages to Kherson.
Distributed bread to 600 families of displaced people in Odesa.
Helped 40 wounded in the hospital in Odesa.
How to Help
Donate — The money goes directly to teams providing aid on the ground, who respond dynamically to the most urgent needs.
Fundraise — Organize fundraisers at your school, work, place of worship, with friends and family, etc.
Spread the word — Share our website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Bluesky Social with your friends, family, and colleagues.
Fill out this form if you’re interested in volunteering with us, and we’ll let you know when opportunities come up.
Download and print our flyer. Ask your local coffee shop if you can add it to the bulletin, or use it as part of your fundraiser.