A reporter for Novaya Gazeta Europe left Dnipro on the morning of January 10 for the village of Bunchuzhne in Synelnykove district with volunteers from Children New Generation, a charity linked to an evangelical church. The team was heading to evacuate a large family in a Volkswagen Transporter converted into an armored vehicle. According to the volunteers, the outer armor is meant to protect against shrapnel, while internal partitions are intended to reduce the risk to all passengers at once if a drone hits.
The driver was an American named Matt, who had come from Boston and had previously worked as a personal security guard. Traveling with him was volunteer Andriy Sopin, a photographer from Sviatohirsk in Donetsk region. After Russia’s full-scale invasion, he himself was evacuated, ended up in a shelter in Dnipro, and stayed to help others. People with direct experience of war now make up a visible part of this volunteer network.
The trip came after a massive attack on Kyiv on the night of January 8 to 9, which delayed trains and disrupted the reporter’s original plans. Dnipro itself had also been hit during the night before departure: the volunteers had barely slept because they first distributed plastic sheeting to residents of damaged apartment blocks and then helped seal shattered windows with chipboard panels. To do this work, the organization has night permits, оперативе information on strike locations, and cooperation with the police.
The evacuation team was accompanied by the White Angels, a special police unit that removes civilians from frontline areas. In Bunchuzhne, the volunteers saw houses already destroyed and heard local residents say that entire streets were leaving the village. The owner of the wooden roadside cafe Kamysh, where the group stopped on the way, spoke about ruined homes, winter, and uncertainty, and by the end of the conversation she broke down in tears.
The article then turns to another side of the same work: assistance after a Russian drone strike on a residential building in Dnipro. Police, emergency responders, municipal crews, and at least seven charitable organizations were working at the site at the same time. Some collected claims for compensation, others provided psychological and legal support, while others cut chipboard for windows and balconies and distributed food, warm clothes, blankets, and essential items.
According to figures the reporter later checked, the blast wave blew out windows in 270 apartments. By the time he left, all openings had been sealed against the frost, although on the third day of the blackout there was still no stable electricity supply. Volunteer Danylo Yatskanych explained that the region uses a closed coordination chat: after a strike is reported, organizations mark whether they can respond, receive the exact location, and head out immediately. In the author’s account, he has repeatedly seen such a tight working link between volunteers, donors, authorities, police, and the State Emergency Service specifically in Dnipro since 2014.