Nonprofit Project Dynamo announces first busload of US evacuees in Ukraine

A U.S. nonprofit announced on Thursday that it was evacuating its first group of Americans in Ukraine to a neighboring country after Russia launched an attack on Ukraine.

The nonprofit, Project Dynamo, said in a statement on Thursday that it was evacuating close to two dozen Americans for its first trip, which it said began shortly after Ukraine was invaded. 

“Right now, our team is working to get the first group of nearly two dozen American citizens and residents out of Ukraine. They are currently traversing the Ukrainian countryside and trying to make their way to an American embassy in a neighboring country,” James Judge, a spokesman for Project Dynamo, said in a statement. “The evacuation began minutes after our team on the ground physically felt the nearby explosions in Kyiv last night.”

Twenty-three people in total are evacuating in its first group, NBC News reported, noting that they were going to a country bordering the west of Ukraine. 

The nonprofit said that members went to Ukraine in January to start rescue operation planning, which it said “intensified after the U.S. State Department evacuated diplomatic personnel and abandoned the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv last week.”

Project Dynamo said it was poring through applications for other Americans intent on leaving Ukraine, saying they had received more requests since Russia launched its attack.

In an interview with Newsmax early Thursday morning, Project Dynamo co-founder Bryan Stern said that he had an 11-year-old girl on his bus and a cybersecurity expert among others whom he was driving through Ukraine.

“The sense that I’m feeling on the ground is everyone’s afraid,” Stern said, describing the mood in Ukraine. 

—Updated at 6:04 p.m.