SAR Kharkiv/Donbas

Search

And

Rescue

What we do:

• Search and Rescue Missions

• Evacuations

• Supplying Humanitarian Aid on the Frontline.

• Supplying fuel and organizing convoys into safe cities.

• Offering mail service to people in isolated areas without cellphone connection.

• Taking pictures of houses for those who left. 

Our main work

We are specialized on the small forgotten towns and villages on the Frontline, we evacuate the civilians and for all those who stay, we get humanitarian aid in; fresh bread, conservative foods, medications and hygiene products.

SAR Missions include searching for specific Individuals using pictures and bare information input from relatives that worry about their parents and elders.

Our current struggle

We are facing a difficult winter and next spring. Thus we brought one, soon two offroaders, unfortunately offroad tyres are very expensive and 4x4's break down more often duo to being more sophisticated. This increases our capabilities, lets us continue working in rough conditions but also increases our costs. 

Further the Frontline is barely moving, thus it's very difficult to convince people to leave. In the first months we actually refrained from convincing but now it's the only way to get people out of the danger. 

 Our History

We started in the rural area around Lysychansk in may. All evacuation teams concentrated on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, thus we were alone in the small villages like Vovchoiarivka, Bila Hora, Myrna Dolyna and many more. 

When Lysychansk fell we worked from Kurdiumivka to Kodema and Semihyria to Novoluhanske when we heard there was a humanitarian catastrophe happening. 

Now we are concentrating our efforts on the small city of Vuhledar. Only few help here and the situation is extreme. The neighboring village Pavlivka has been completely destroyed. The Russians lost here 300 men in just one bloody offensive.

About me

My name is André West, im 21 years old and came from Germany in april. The first month i volunteered in the kyiv oblast, however was soon frustrated to do work with many people that would help just to post selfies on social media and feel good about it. I spent the evenings to find a way to really make a difference and realized the officials are completely incompetent in terms of civilian evacuations. Now that the numbers in terms of evacuations went down, I'll start to slowly shift our efforts in the direction of rebuilding the Donbas, however the start is not in sight yet. However i have no plans of leaving Ukraine in the near future. 

About the Organization 

SAR Kharkiv/Donbas was first part of TAUSAR, however this combination did not work out for us. Unsufficient funding, unsuitable cars, lack of communication, etc. So i took matters in my own hands and fundraise for ourselves. Since then we are an efficiently working team. Being independent from big organizations however also means our budget is always super tight. Yet we managed to fundraise for a Mitsubishi Pajero and a Pickup will follow soon. We brought spare parts, expensive tyres and finance car repairs ourselves. We are still not official but it doesn't hinder us in any way. 

Additional photographs

 Our Statistics moved to the new Tab >Mission statistics<

A big thanks to all of our supporters for making all this possible! Please keep supporting us for further help to Ukrainian citizens caught in the crossfire.