His bus has been shot and blown up but this US veteran is still crossing Ukraine, saving lives
This feature was originally published in March 2022
When The Independent spoke to Project Dynamo cofounder Bryan Stern in March, he was driving through Kyiv suffering from a perforated ear drum.
That morning had been his closest call to date with Russian forces in the almost three weeks since his Florida-based non-profit started running rescue missions to evacuate people out of Ukraine.
During a mission to try to reach an American man and his Ukrainian wife who are stuck in a village north of Kyiv, Russian troops attacked his vehicle with artillery fire.
“I got the crap kicked out of me by Russian artillery this morning,” he said.
The village was surrounded by Russian troops who in turn have been surrounded by Ukrainian troops – making evacuation of civilians inside the area somewhat impossible.
Mr Stern said the Ukrainian troops told him it was too dangerous to let him pass through their checkpoints around the village.
“We drove around it in a big circle trying to get in but we weren’t allowed in,” he said.
“So we got information on what was happening so we knew where the Russians were going and also knew where the Ukrainians were going.
“We found a window of time where none of them were going to be in the same place at the same time as [the couple] so we could move in.
“And it worked – but then it fell apart as the time window closed and, almost like clockwork, the Russians started dropping artillery on our position and hit where we were.”
He and his driver luckily survived the attack from Vladimir Putin’s forces, but they had no choice but to turn back.
The American-Ukrainian couple are still trapped in the village.
Having to face the fact that he can’t save everyone is “terrible”, said Mr Stern.
“Today, I tried for hours and hours and hours to get to them. I got there at 9am in the morning and tried and tried and tried,” he said.
A family of evacuees on the other side of the Ukrainian border
“And you build a relationship with these people. I’d spoken to them like 50 times in the last three days.
“And he was telling me ‘leave me, leave me, it’s too dangerous for you’ and I’m like ‘I can’t give up’… but I couldn’t get to them.”
Mr Stern plans to make another attempt to reach the couple but, with Kyiv now locking down for two days, he isn’t sure when that will be.
“You can plan the tactics but you can’t plan the threat,” he said.
A bus full of people are evacuated out of Ukraine by Bryan Stern on 4 March
Bryan Stern in the ambulance after transporting three premature surrogate babies across the border into Poland to meet their parents
