Vulnerable Ukrainians rely on ragtag network of helpers to escape danger in Donbas

When 83-year-old Lydia Boyko left her home in Kramatorsk on a sunny day last week — lying on a thin mattress in the back of a van as air raid sirens wailed — she had no idea if she would ever see it again.

Or where she was going. 

She gave a slight cry of pain as two volunteers lifted her clumsily into the van, and worried that her housedress was rising up. She tried tugging it down until someone handed her a sheet to cover up with. 

Her crutches and the bag she'd prepared for the journey were also handed into the van.

"She has such a condition that she cannot cope on her own, and we will not be able to run to her," said Lyudmila Lyadskykh, the wife of Boyko's nephew.

Boyko's departure was hasty and unceremonious and representative of how many of the frail and elderly residents of the Donbas find themselves saying goodbye to lifelong homes as fighting intensifies, along with Russia's steady advance in eastern Ukraine.

She is also one of countless older Ukrainians who are relying on an ad hoc network of drivers and aid groups to get them out of the danger zone.

WATCH | Aid groups help older Ukrainians escape dangerous areas:

Widowed 20 years ago, Boyko lived on her own but relied on her nephew's family for help. Lyadskykh says the worry is that if Boyko doesn't leave before things here get even worse, she'll be trapped — as will they, unable to leave her — if or when the front line reaches Kramatorsk.

Lyadskykh has no firm idea where Boyko is headed beyond the major city of Dnipro, 250 kilometres to the west.

"They said [she'll go] to Dnipro, and then the volunteers will send her either to Western Ukraine or somewhere. I don't even know."

The Russians are already in control of almost all of the neighbouring province of Luhansk.

The fight there for the key city of Severodonetsk has been grinding and bloody. On Sunday, Russian troops came a step closer to taking it when they destroyed one of the bridges still allowing access in and out of the city.

The van and the volunteers sent to collect Boyko have been sent from East-SOS, a Ukrainian NGO that helps extricate people from conflict zones, among other things.