How to Help Ukraine: Evacuating civilians from front-line areas and temporarily occupied territories with Helping to Leave (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members, 

Thank you for your continued support. Last year, we launched this newsletter for our members — because we heard from you that there’s interest in getting more involved in helping Ukraine. 

Each month, we send one edition of the “How to Help Ukraine” newsletter, highlighting an organization supporting Ukraine and giving you a closer look at civil society — along with opportunities to donate or, in some cases, volunteer. Thank you to everyone who asked this question, who reads this newsletter, and who makes a contribution. 

In the ninth edition of the “How to Help Ukraine” newsletter, we’re proud to share with you the work of Helping to Leave, a Ukrainian charity that helps evacuate civilians from temporarily occupied territories and front-line areas in Ukraine — for free. 

Helping to Leave also works to evacuate vulnerable individuals who need special medical assistance, helping move them abroad for treatment and rehabilitation. For each person, the team builds a specialized route, providing them with an escort, medical transport, any necessary medicine and care products, overnight accommodation, and, if necessary, placement into specialized facilities. This work is complex and expensive, and requires about $2,400 a month and the team has set a budget of about $23,600 annually. You can make a donation to this work here. 

Helping to Leave driver Stepan waiting for his next bus trip from the Volyn Humanitarian Corridor to Kovel. (Photo by Bogdana Ferguson)

Andrii, one of the people who was evacuated by Helping to Leave. He was evacuated from the temporarily occupied town of Hola Prystan, via the Mokrany-Domanove humanitarian corridor. (Photo by Bogdana Ferguson)

Helping to Leave initially began on Feb. 24, 2022, in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion. It started off as a Telegram chat to connect Ukrainians with requests for help to people from all over the world offering support. In the first weeks, the chat grew into an information channel with 40,000 readers, and the team then built out an infrastructure for evacuating Ukrainians from dangerous areas. 

Helping to Leave’s main goal is to help people obtain critical humanitarian aid and evacuate them to safer territories, helping people leave active combat zones, front-line areas, temporarily occupied territories, and even Russian regions where they’ve been deported. 

The team not only transports people from one point to another, but also aims to provide accompaniment on the way, assistance with adapting in a new location, and information on obtaining and renewing Ukrainian documents. 

Since Helping to Leave started four years ago, they've helped over 71,000 people with some kind of assistance, from humanitarian aid and psychological support, to evacuations where the team has organized the entire evacuation process. Over 21,000 people were evacuated from temporarily occupied territories and Russia, where these Ukrainians had been deported. 

Today, the team has grown to over 150 employees and volunteers, based in 19 countries. About one-third of the team has either received assistance from Helping to Leave themselves or had a relative receive help, so they understand the needs of the people they support. 

Helping to Leave is currently raising money for the evacuations of vulnerable people who need medical assistance, including those with mobility issues and with serious illnesses. For each case, the team builds a personalized route for the evacuation, and provides the person with an escort, medical transport, necessary medicine, overnight accommodation, and placement into specialized facilities or treatment abroad if needed. This work is complex and expensive, requiring about $2,400 a month — the team has estimated that about $23,600 is needed for the evacuations of vulnerable people in 2026. You can make a donation via card payment here toward Helping to Leave’s work on this project. 

You can read more about Helping to Leave’s evacuations of vulnerable people by reading the story of a couple from Donetsk Oblast, Olena and Oleksandr, here. You can also find Helping to Leave on Instagram and Facebook.

Thank you for your support — and we hope you find these letters highlighting organizations like Helping to Leave valuable. If you have any questions or feedback about our newsletter, please feel free to respond directly to this email or reach out via email at a.chernova@kyivindependent.com and let us know what you think of this membership benefit.