A fishing village that risked all to help 2,000 flee Putin’s forces
When a heavily pregnant woman about to give birth turned up on fisherman Oleksandr Dvorianets’ doorstep begging for help to cross a river to go to hospital, he knew he had to do something.
It was March 12, the Russians had occupied their village of Strakholissia north of Kyiv and talk was rife of mass graves, rapes and summary executions – atrocities that would turn out to be true. Everyone was terrified.
For the 39-year-old Dvorianets, there were two options. He either said no and let her give birth on her own in the village where both she and her baby could die, or he could risk his own life trying to ferry her to safety across a waterway watched by Russian snipers and drones. He chose the latter.
“Either way death was likely,” he told The Sunday Telegraph as he smoked a roll-up cigarette on the river bank by his boat’s mooring point.
“If we said no to them, then who would help? We had to.”
He and his fellow fishermen and women decided it was safest to cross the Dnipro River in daylight, so at least they could spot the drones and helicopters overhead. Although going at night would give cover, they feared the hum of the boat’s motor would be more obvious when it was quiet.
It worked – and soon word spread around the Russian-occupied villages in the area that people in a little-known fishing village were quietly offering to smuggle people to Ukrainian-held territory on the other side of the river.
Before long, Mr Dvorianets and 13 other fishermen and women went from going out on the water to catch pike and catfish to running up to three evacuations a day.
Over the course of a month, they crammed more than 2,000 women, children, elderly and vulnerable people, plus their belongings, which ranged from dogs to prams, into their small boats. They also brought more than 70 tons of aid back for the occupied villages. Each journey was a perilous undertaking almost worthy of a Hollywood film.
When they began making the journeys in mid-March, the river had frozen over and they had to crack the ice with shovels to move forward. Falling in or getting stuck would mean almost certain death. It meant that only the fishermen, experts on the river, could attempt the routes. “I grew up near the water, I know every corner,” said Mr Dvorianets, who ran most of the evacuations.
Then there was the threat of being spotted. “It’s a big open water so there is nowhere to hide,” he said.
They were shot at a few times, but fortunately suffered no casualties. After the first near miss, they decided to find another route and zigzag across the water. Each crossing took 45 nerve-wracking minutes in good weather – longer in bad.
And the stress didn’t stop once back on dry land. “Every day we thought the Russians would come for us, but they never did,” said another fisherman, Andrii Bushuiev, 52. “We were living in fear. We had no idea what was next.”
“Every crossing could have been our last,” admitted Olena Aliieva, 50. “But when people came here with children asking for help, how could we say no?”
Their last crossing took place on
April 10, shortly before Ukrainian troops liberated the region.
Since then they have returned to life as normal. They go out on the river each day to catch pike, catfish, and sell it to make a living. When The Telegraph visited, all their nets were prepared on the pontoon, ready for work the next day. It’s almost like it never happened.
When asked how it felt to have played a part in saving so many people, Ms Aliieva just shrugged. “It feels normal,” she said. “We saved our own.”
‘Either way, death was likely. If we said no to them, then who would help? We had to do it’
‘Every crossing could have been our last. But how could we say no?’