British Expeditionary
Aid & Rescue
UKRAINE
ABOUT US
British Expeditionary Aid & Rescue's Founder and Chief Executive, Elizabeth, left her career in technology and drove alone to Ukraine ten days after the full scale invasion. With a Second World War family legacy - her grandfather having served in the British Special Forces (SOE) and her Polish grandmother having been forced to leave her homeland - it felt important that she act and respond to Russia's invasion.
She started evacuating vulnerable people, only expecting to be in Ukraine for a few weeks, but in the event stayed for 3 years. After witnessing the constraints on large international organisations, she decided to found an independent, quick-response unit with some other Brits. Members of the team included men and women from a wide variety of backgrounds, both British and Ukrainian, depending on the project being executed.
The team worked to simply get things done, without fuss or fanfare, to solve the most critical issues facing people affected by the conflict.
FRONTLINE EVACUATION
In early 2022, we were asked to evacuate people from the eastern Donbas, who were bedridden or disabled and so were trapped in the face of the Russian advance.
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We spent 2022 evacuating vulnerable people and families from the Donbas frontline - Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Toretsk - operating up to 1km from the line of contact. We evacuated people on a daily basis, putting them onto trains to central Ukraine.
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In early 2023, we relocated to the southern front, in order to evacuate people from the liberated parts of Kherson oblast. Having survived 9 months of Russian occupation, these people had to flee their homes as the Russians were heavily shelling the territory that was no longer under their control.
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In total, we executed specialist evacuations for 400 people who were unable to evacuate themselves. The wider impact is unknown; evacuating these people often enabled their family members to also leave and escape Russian agression.
DRINKING WATER
Before being defeated and withdrawing from the southern Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts, the Russians tried to make it impossible for Ukrainian life to return. They shot down water towers and poisoned wells with dead dogs or their own deceased soldiers.
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In April 2023, we started to install water barrels in liberated villages and regularly filling them with drinking water. Then, in June 2023, the Russians destroyed the Nova Kakhovka Dam. Overnight, the resultant flooding contaminated the water supply of every village, town and city along the Dnipro River in Kherson oblast. Wells also started to test positive for Cholera; people were terrified and desperate. Within a matter of days, we went from delivering water to 1,000 people in 11 villages - to delivering water to 30,000 people across 36 villages, towns and cities. With a rapid expansion of the team, we delivered over half a million litres in total.
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We also designed and implemented a self-sufficiency model, where we put together and distributed water collection equipment for each of the villages. This meant they were no longer reliant on us to fill the water barrels. We liaised with local governments to ensure the villages' free access to safe wells. For Kherson city, we handed over our water deliveries to the official water utility, Vodakanal.
RECONSTRUCTION
Despite having worked across numerous frontline areas, we were shocked by the sheer level of destruction in the liberated parts of Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts. The Russians had deliberately razed some villages to the ground, forcing every person who wasn't killed to flee.
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In September 2023, we started to rebuild villages that the Russians had attempted to erase. We hired local Ukrainian builders, both to ensure we had expertise of how to rebuild Ukrainian homes in a culturally sensitive manner and to create employment in an area where the work economy had been destroyed.
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We completed our final major reconstruction project in December 2024.
PRESS COVERAGE
Our work has anonymously had international coverage by BBC News, The New York Times, Le Monde, Sky News, The Washington Post and in the award-winning documentary film Dear Beautiful Beloved
Podcast:
Click here to listen
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GALLERY
Our Final Project
CONTACT US
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We concluded our final project at the end of 2024 and so, following 3 years of work in Ukraine, we returned to the UK.
Our involvement in Ukraine continues, so should you wish to you are very welcome to contact us via the following email address:​
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