With Russian forces just 7km from the city, Pen Farthing and his team are dismantling the very shelter they helped rebuild – and racing west to evacuate animals and save lives.
The Nowzad rescue team has launched a high-stakes emergency evacuation to save vulnerable animals and evacuate animals trapped in the path of Russia’s advance on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, where invading forces are now within just seven kilometres of the city limits.
Dubbed “Operation Kramatorsk”, the mission is being led by Nowzad founder Pen Farthing, the British former Royal Marine whose 2021 “Operation Ark” evacuation from Kabul made global headlines. Speaking to me recently, Pen was characteristically frank about life on the frontline of animal welfare – and about the impossible choices facing those who refuse to evacuate animals and leave them behind.
Now, just weeks later, he and his team are doing it all over again.
Dismantling a sanctuary they helped build
Working alongside local rescuers, the Nowzad team – including the charity’s Chief Veterinary Advisor Dr Lach – is currently evacuating the Drooh Animal Shelter, foster homes and surrounding rescue centres in Kramatorsk.
The cruel irony is not lost on anyone involved. In 2023, Nowzad supporters funded brand new kennels at Drooh and paid to repair perimeter fencing destroyed by a Russian missile strike. Today, much of that same infrastructure is being dismantled piece by piece and moved west, in a desperate bid to stay ahead of the ever-encroaching Russian frontlines.
The road to Smila
The logistics are gruelling. The “Mighty Trio” – Pen, Australian vet Dr Lach and Dutch volunteer vet tech Angela Stoop – have been vaccinating hundreds of animals against rabies as they travel, while navigating rescue vehicles through “grey zones” and heavy checkpoint congestion.
What is normally an eight-hour drive west to Smila has become a twelve-hour marathon of patience, dodging two-foot-deep potholes and roads shattered by heavy military machinery.
The Trio’s first rescue trip successfully reached Smila on Monday. The riverside town in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine is no one’s idea of completely safe – but it offers a much-needed haven where the dogs can decompress away from the heavy shelling of the Donbas.
Further round trips are planned for later this week and into next. Charity patron and longstanding animal welfare advocate Peter Egan will join the team on the ground in Ukraine next week.
The fate that awaits those left behind
The mission is fuelled by a grim reality: if Kramatorsk falls – and the prospect is now very real – any animals that cannot be moved, whether due to behavioural issues or fragile health, face the terrifying likelihood of being shot on-site by invading forces.
“We don’t just see numbers; we see family members,” said Pen, Founder and CEO of Nowzad.
“The bond between these people and their animals is often the only thing keeping them grounded in all this chaos. As I’ve said before, leaving them behind was never an option. We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure no animal is left to face that fate.”
£50,000 emergency appeal
Nowzad has launched an emergency fund aiming to raise £50,000 to sustain the multi-shelter evacuation. The money is critical for erecting temporary kennelling further west to receive the influx of arrivals, and for funding multiple 18-hour round trips through active conflict zones.
“We did it in Afghanistan with Operation Ark in 2021; we are doing it now in Ukraine,” Pen added.
“If the tide turns and Kramatorsk remains safe, we will bring them home. But we can’t and won’t just sit back and wait to find out this time.”
As the front line advances into Kramatorsk, every second counts — please click here to fuel the next life-saving extraction and bring the abandoned animals of Kramatorsk to safety: https://donorbox.org/operation-kramatorsk
[Image credit: Nowzad – via Facebook]
