Evacuating people who do not want to leave

Through the summer of 2024, evacuation from communities near the front continued, and it is worth writing honestly about what that work involves.

Who is left by that stage

By the time a community is being evacuated under fire, those who wanted to leave have usually left. The remainder are disproportionately old, disproportionately unwell, and often people caring for someone who cannot easily be moved.

Their reasons for staying are not irrational. A house is a lifetime of work. A garden is food. A cemetery holds specific people. And a person of eighty-five knows something true: that displacement at that age is often the last thing that happens to them.

What the work actually looks like

Repeated visits by the same volunteers, so a relationship exists before the day it is needed. Practical answers to practical objections — where exactly you will sleep, who will feed the animals, whether your medication will be there. Transport suitable for a person who cannot walk.

And, crucially, no coercion. Evacuation carried out against a person's will produces someone who returns at the first opportunity, into a place more dangerous than when they left.

What happens afterwards

This is where the assistance matters most and gets discussed least. Transit centres, then longer-term accommodation, medical care, pension and payment continuity, and someone to help with the paperwork.

What I would emphasise

The volunteers and municipal staff doing this drive into places most people are driving out of, repeatedly, to argue gently with someone's grandmother. It is the least photogenic and most demanding humanitarian work of this war.