U.S. nonprofit evacuates first group of Americans from Ukraine
A U.S. nonprofit that evacuated Americans from Kabul is now helping U.S. citizens and residents flee Ukraine, with its first busload of 23 evacuees now en route to a country on Ukraine's western border.
According to Project Dynamo, the bus left for the border at 8 a.m. local time, or 1 a.m. U.S. Eastern time.
“They are currently traversing the Ukrainian countryside and trying to make their way to an American embassy in a neighboring country,” said James Judge, a spokesman for Project Dynamo. “The evacuation began minutes after our team on the ground physically felt the nearby explosions in Kyiv last night.”
Project Dynamo was co-founded by Bryan Stern and named after the British evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. Stern, a former government employee who now runs a consulting firm in Tampa, says he formed Dynamo in the middle of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan in August. His group has helped thousands of people leave that country, a process that continues.
When Ukraine started to go “sideways,” said Stern, a donor asked him to assist with a Ukraine evacuation as well. Stern has now been in Ukraine for more than a week, fielding requests that had begun to mount even before Russia invaded in force.
“If an American asks me for help,” said Stern, “I say, ‘Yes.’”
Stern said that in Afghanistan, “We had to build a mousetrap in the middle of a catastrophe.” Project Dynamo now has practice in moving large numbers of people out of a danger zone. In addition to sending buses to the border, Stern was able to get some individuals onto commercial flights prior to the Russian invasion. His group was able to plan secondary and tertiary routes, establish safe houses, find buses and do Covid testing — applying lessons learned in Afghanistan.
“We have lived this already,” he said. “We’ve already seen this movie before.
In Ukraine, however, he said the U.S. government was more upfront in warning people to flee the country ahead of the violence, a bluntness he appreciated.
“This time they were honest and said, ‘We aren’t going to come and get you.’”