Ukraine's 'hell jumpers'

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1:36The Documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service.

1:48Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, millions of civilians have been forced out of their homes by the war. but some have chosen to stay. Civilians are still there, literally with bombs flying over their heads, hitting their homes, drones buzzing overhead.

2:13These are people who have had four and a half years to make a decision to stay or go. Some can't leave, some won't leave. And there are others who risk their lives to rescue the last civilians living near the front line. I was struck by something said by a volunteer called Bahadan Zoyakov. After being wounded on one of the evacuation missions, he said, OK, I'm going to recover and go back. These men and women have been described as hell jumpers. The so-called grey zone, or the kill zone, has expanded. So many videos show vehicles being targeted, volunteers being targeted. Since the start of the war, the job of evacuating people has evolved alongside an increasingly hostile and unpredictable battlefield.

3:13We ask who are the evacuators and why do they risk their lives? to save others.

3:23Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Krasi Ivanova-Twig, and this is the global jigsaw from BBC Monitoring, where we look at the world through the lens of its media, exploring the narratives, the propaganda, and the disinformation. Radio Tehran. We didn't get on the territory of Ukraine. Western countries are not the international community. That era has finished.

3:56Let's go back to the 24th of February 2022, when Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, heading for Kiev.

4:09Not long afterwards, we began hearing about daring attempts to get people to safety from the villages and towns near the front line.

4:22Four and a half years later, evacuations are still happening, but getting less media attention. Civilians are still trapped between life and death along the 1 ,000-kilometre-long front line. BBC Monitoring's chief analyst Vitaly Shevchenko, who is himself Ukrainian, recently returned from the country. He was in touch with evacuators there. Donetsk police say thousands of civilians are still there in Donetsk region alone, and a massive effort is still underway to get them out of the danger zone. This year alone, More than 3 ,000 civilians have been evacuated from Donetsk region, more than 1 ,000 of them children.

5:16So that, Christ, it gives us an idea of the scale of the challenge. Why are they still living there? Is it inability to move? Is it unwillingness? What's behind this resistance to leave their homes? Some can't leave, some won't leave. And it's important to remember that a huge number of those thousands of civilians trapped in their basements and cellars, they've had a lot of time to have a think about what's going on. So for a lot of these people, this means that they've made a decision to stay.

6:02After talking to people involved in these evacuations, it seems as though most of the people who are there on the front line, they are sort of advanced in their years, which means they're rooted, they are wedded to their homes.

6:28One thing I've heard a lot is, well, I've got my chickens and cats and dogs and goats. How am I supposed to leave them all behind? To which evacuators say, we can take them with you. So we'll be able to evacuate? We'll be. We'll be. There's one notable instance of a police unit in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region. They had been approaching one particular gentleman there in a village saying, look, you've got to go. It's getting really dangerous. You will die probably if you don't leave. And he said, I've got 11 goats. How do you want me to abandon them? So what the police did, they turned up in a massive white van.

7:17So they put in that van, not just the gentleman, but all of his 11 goats.

7:27I mean, this kind of attachment to your home is something we can all understand. But what I find extraordinary is that it's not just the people who are determined to stay, but we hear about people who have returned. There was one case of a woman who returned and opened a kebab shop, which is an extraordinary act of defiance. Why do people go back? If you are more able-bodied, you can come and go if you want. A lot of people I've been following came to a conclusion that there's more to life than just physical safety. Some people, after going to safer places within Ukraine or abroad, they reach the conclusion that, you know, I'm fed and watered, I'm safe, but a huge chunk of my life is missing.

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10:26Lives Less Ordinary Love Stories from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. Now let's turn to the people who are doing the evacuations. Who are the evacuators? What kind of people take up this job? All sorts of people, Christy. There's an official police unit called White Angels. There are numerous volunteers. The military are involved in it. When they are going into a town or a village and passing through it and they see a civilian, they tend to offer them to leave. It's kind of unusual and notable that the military, the police and civilian volunteers, they work really, really closely together.

11:16And I spoke to somebody from the police in Donetsk region. I asked him, do these civilian volunteers, do they not get in your way?

11:29Said that, well, they have expertise, they know what they're doing. Some of them have really important local knowledge. So they go on missions together. In terms of who these people are specifically, I've been following one Ukrainian TV personality, TV DJ, TV presenter, Denis Christov, who dropped all that and became an evacuator. Many people doing that, completely switching their lines of activity. Another person I've been in touch with is called Vlad Makhovsky. He's a businessman from Zaporizhia, and he's also a religious man. He's a pastor. I am a believer. I'm a church pastor, and my calling is saving people, so that's my role.

12:22Our country is going through such times when you can't stand aside. You have got to do all you can for victory so that the enemy doesn't move even further into our land. I was struck by something said by a volunteer called Bahadan Zoyakov. After being wounded on one of the evacuation missions, he said, OK, I'm wounded now, I'm going to recover and go back. It's a calling and a mission. What does it take, though, to become an evacuator? Because presumably a desire to help and a kind heart is not enough. Oh, it's absolutely not enough, Christy. You've really got to know what you're doing. Otherwise, the best case scenario, you become a liability.

13:12The worst case scenario, you're going to die painfully. But Roddychenko from Donetsk Police, he said that when they train police evacuators, they prefer local people. We had nothing in writing telling us what to do and how. We had to learn on the go, whenever we evacuated people or delivered humanitarian aid. All these details to do with tactics, time of day, logistics, routes and roads. That's why back then, and to this day, we make sure that all police officers are locals who understand the logistics and the location. Because they know the routes, they know the little nukes and little footpaths that help evacuate when things go south quickly with all these drones buzzing around with endless Russian attacks.

14:05You need to know how these drones operate. You need to know how to use anti-drone technology. Vlad Makhowski from Zeparysia, he showed me what he had. This piece of kit, a drone detector, a drone analyzer, then a net throw a pistol for drones, this rifle too. This is what we need to defend ourselves and other people against FPV drones. FPV drones carrying shaped charged explosives burn through the armor. You have got to be very careful. It was a pretty big drone detector, which sort of beeps when there's a drone about. Then Vlad had a pistol that shoots nets out to capture the drones. Not bullets, but nets.

14:59And also a big, good, old-fashioned rifle that shoots down drones. To survive, you need to know that. Are drones the biggest danger that they have to navigate? So-called FPV drones, yes, first-person view drones, which are smaller than the ubiquitous Shahid drones, for example, but they are very lethal. In a previous episode of The Global Jigsaw, we looked into how drones transformed this war. We explored Ukraine's and Russia's drone building capacity. The Iranian Shahid drones are mass-produced in Russia under the name of geran. Yes, that means geranium, the flower. As for FPV drones, Russian officials told Bloomberg that the country produces more than 15 ,000 per day, orders of magnitude more than at the start of the war.

15:54Russia has found a way of getting them across longer distances. What they do, basically two things. One is using motherships, a bigger drone that can travel longer distances with lots of FPV drones on it. So they scatter and kill. The second way of doing it is using what they call a mesh network topology, where these smaller FPV drones relay radio signals from each other and then onto the operator. This allows them to travel for longer distances. So it's a cat and mouse game. It endlessly changes and to survive you've got to stay one step ahead of your enemy. Which is why the vans that they use are equipped with this grill on top, right?

16:44This is to protect the vehicle from drones. Yeah, they call them barbecue grills. Vlad is using one of them. It's a big van and there's a grill on top. The idea is that if the drone hits the vehicle, it explodes a certain distance away from the actual body of the vehicle and the hope is that it will reduce the impact of the explosion.

17:13And these drones, do they target these vehicles deliberately? It would appear that some do. I've heard several accounts of vehicles with red crosses on them being targeted. The evacuations don't simply ensure civilians are moved to areas of safety. They give a chance of survival to those who are critically ill and injured. In a recent report, the medical charity MSF, Doctors Without Borders, said that the frequency of Russia's attacks on healthcare suggests that they are a sustained feature of the war. And as they told the BBC, first-person view drone strikes are almost always intentional. They are too consistent, too frequent and too precise to be incidental.

18:03Vehicles with inscriptions saying evacuating civilians, they've been targeted as well. So it's no guarantee. Putting a cross on it or just saying don't hit us, we're evacuating civilians, that's not always going to help. So the evacuators are facing lethal danger just to reach their destination, just to go to these people. But then they'll have the task of persuading them. How do they do that?

18:35It's not easy to convince somebody to leave, leave everything behind and just go places. And people like Denis Christov, who is really good as a communicator, being a media personality, the main thrust of his communication with somebody who's not prepared to leave is, well, look, there's a way.

19:01do not feel stuck do not feel like you're making a choice that is too costly for you as a person your dog your goats your chickens they'll come with you we'll find a place for you to stay

19:21sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't there's one particular video shot by Denis Christov. On the surface of it, it sounds and looks very slow-paced, almost routine, and yet what's unfolding is terrifyingly life-altering.

19:47It's all about life and death choices. So he finds a man in a village, almost completely destroyed, with explosions in the background, a man with a dog, and he tells him, well, look, you've got a dog. If you don't want to save yourself, save your dog. It will come with you. And the man says, you know what? This is what I've lived in my life. I'm going to stay put. And at the background, you hear the rumble of explosions. Around them, you see very obvious, undeniable signs of death and destruction that can catch up with you, that can kill you.

20:35Pavlov Yechenko from Donetsk Region Police, he said they appealed to their relatives to record a short, I don't know, 30-second video which they can show to the person they're trying to evacuate. Here's something we've been doing If people tell us about someone who might be in two minds about evacuating we ask them to record a short video and relatives get emotional when they record them There are tears There are children and grandchildren It's not blackmail They show how things really are So when you turn up and show this short clip 30-40 seconds long it can work It works well But not always, unfortunately And even when they agree to go, the price is yet more heartbreak as they leave everything behind.

21:30You are listening to The Global Jigsaw from BBC Monitoring. So this is a very complex logistical operation. and not only they have to know the terrain and evade drones and other whole mix of lethal dangers, they have to persuade reluctant residents to get onto the vans and leave. So it's quite a difficult task. Can you take us through how the evacuation unfolds? You know, what are the different stages? The beginning of this journey, in most cases, starts with a request for help or a signal, a message that there's somebody there who may need to be evacuated. There's a hotline set up by the government jointly with volunteers, evacuators and police.

22:24They can be told of somebody needing evacuation. What happens then needs to happen really quickly because the so-called grey zone or the kill zone has expanded greatly. Most of the videos filmed by evacuators, they are really, really fast-paced. You need to get into the vehicle quickly and go.

22:54So many videos show vehicles being targeted, volunteers being targeted.

23:05Some of these initial stages, they involve armoured vehicles used by the military, by the police. Their job is to get you to the safest location possible. Then the next leg is getting to a place of even more safety, a properly organised refugee centre.

23:34And then the local authorities and or civilian evacuators, they decide where to put you next. So anything goes. You find a flat, you move into a flat. You find somebody willing to accept refugees into a flat. That's what happens. We came across an extraordinary recording where an army evacuator offers his own house to the people he's trying to move to safer ground.