Mothers Fear Russian Propaganda Claims of Organ Harvesting, Hindering Child Evacuations in Donetsk Oblast

Russian drone attacks in the Donetsk region have claimed the lives of multiple children throughout 2025, with emergency evacuation teams facing dangerous conditions while trying to remove civilians from combat zones.

The volunteer evacuation organization “White Angels” has been working under increasingly perilous circumstances to evacuate families with children from frontline cities including Pokrovsk, Mirnograd, and Dobropillia, where mandatory evacuation orders were implemented earlier this year as Russian forces intensified their offensive in eastern Ukraine.

“Applications from families with children were processed quickly after the evacuation orders,” said Gennady Yudin, head of the White Angels evacuation team. “People terrified by civilian killings in broad daylight called desperately seeking evacuation assistance.”

Despite the evident dangers, Yudin noted that some residents have not only refused to leave but have actively attempted to smuggle children back into active combat zones, sometimes concealing them in equipment containers. Ukrainian authorities established checkpoints specifically to prevent families from returning with children to these dangerous areas.

“At checkpoints, we enforced strict protocols. If we caught a family trying to enter an evacuation zone with a child, we would separate them—one parent could proceed, but the other had to remain with the child in a safer area,” Yudin explained. “Unfortunately, people found alternative routes to transport children through areas under rocket and drone attacks, including mined territories.”

According to Yudin, some taxi drivers have been complicit, accepting payment to transport families with children into “gray zone” territories where active combat is ongoing. “In Pokrovsk alone, we evacuated one boy and his parents from the Shakhtarskyi microdistrict three separate times,” he said, highlighting the recurring challenge of keeping evacuated families from returning.

The consequences of these decisions have been devastating. On Ukraine’s Constitution Day, a particularly horrific incident occurred when a Russian drone targeted two children riding bicycles in central Pokrovsk. A boy sustained life-threatening injuries, including the amputation of both legs and severe arm trauma.

First responders applied tourniquets, but the child required immediate medical evacuation. As law enforcement officers attempted to transport him to the hospital, their vehicle came under attack from a “Molniya” drone. One White Angels volunteer, Kostya Tunitsky, was wounded in the assault.

“The attack created a critical delay in medical treatment,” Yudin recalled. “We waited an hour for another evacuation vehicle to arrive. We prioritized the injured boy and the girl, sending them first, but the time lost proved fatal. The boy died despite our efforts. Without that drone attack, he likely could have been saved.”

The pattern of targeting evacuation vehicles and civilian gatherings has become a hallmark of Russian tactics in the region, according to local officials. These attacks appear designed to spread fear and accelerate population displacement in contested territories.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner has documented dozens of cases where children have been killed or injured in the Donetsk region this year, with many incidents involving targeted drone strikes against clearly identifiable civilians.

International humanitarian organizations have condemned these attacks as potential war crimes, noting that deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure violates international humanitarian law. The United Nations has called for immediate investigations into these incidents as part of its broader monitoring of human rights violations in the conflict.

As Russian forces continue their push into Ukrainian-held territory in Donetsk, evacuation operations become increasingly hazardous, with volunteers like the White Angels working under constant threat of aerial surveillance and attack while trying to save vulnerable civilians from active combat zones.