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The crews of the NGO "Volunteer - 68" carry out evacuation flights to rescue people with limited mobility not only from the threatened frontline areas. We have also repeatedly participated in events coordinated by the office of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets to exchange Ukrainians who remained in the occupied territories against their will.
It has always been about evacuating civilians with physical disabilities, which is the specificity and priority of our organization.
On New Year's Eve 2025, the crew of the "Volunteer - 68" went to the border with Belarus to pick up sixteen-year-old Georgiy, a disabled person since childhood diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Heorhiy came under occupation, one might say, from the first hours of the war, because at the time of the invasion he was in a children's neurological dispensary in Oleshky.
His brother Petro, his only relative, had been trying to get his younger brother back for almost three years. And finally, thanks to the joint efforts of the Ombudsman's Office, special services and exchange negotiation teams, it became possible.
At first, Heorhiy was sent from Oleshky to Moscow, where, according to him, he was fattened up. The Russians probably intended the exchange to bring them a certain media bonus: look how caring we are. Then the guy was sent to Minsk, where Petro met him, and from there the brothers were taken to a certain place on the border with Ukraine, where the evacuation crew of the "Volunteer - 68" Center was waiting for them.
Unfortunately, we cannot tell you exactly how our crew was organized to enter the territory of Belarus, because it was a special operation, the details of which were insisted upon by the curators of the exchange. However, our colleagues crossed the Belarusian-Ukrainian border in a completely trivial way - through a checkpoint.
From that moment on, the trip became completely regular and even routine. After all, the journey from Novi Yarylovychi on the border to Cherkasy, in the heart of Ukraine, was unusually calm and safe.
Now Heorhiy, a surprisingly nice guy, is being taken care of in a specialized institution in Cherkasy. We wish him all the best in life.
