When Russia's war with Ukraine began, a small band of volunteers felt driven to help, but they had little idea that they would be dedicating the next two years to saving lives.
From travelling thousands of kilometres in snow and ice to deliver aid and equipment to Ukrainian hospitals to saving the lives of injured soldiers on the frontline or repatriating the dead, the group has been striving to do their bit to bring a humanitarian victory to Ukraine.
Ewan Cameron, from Scotland, first went to Ukraine a month after the war broke out to help rescue a friend, but the tragedy he witnessed there inspired him to stay and help.
He set up the charity ReactAid to bring in medical supplies and to help evacuate the wounded.
His team compromises trauma medics with a mutual desire to help.
Manchester midwife Wendy Warrington met Mr Cameron as she helped refugees to flee the conflict.
Inspired by her Polish grandfather George Bielski, who survived Auschwitz and gave evidence at the Nuremberg trials, Ms Warrington travelled to Poland at the outbreak of the conflict.
When she saw the devastation, she was compelled to leave the safety of the border and use her medical skills closer to the lines of Russian attack.
Now she and Mr Cameron have built a network of medics whom they supply with equipment, from incubators to ultrasound machines and clothes.
British men rescue dozens of injured soldiers
Mr Cameron and co-worker Craig Borthwick, a former counter-terrorism officer, do more than merely supply hospitals.
Conducting midnight missions to rescue troops from the trenches at the heart of Ukraine’s war is a far cry from Mr Cameron's earlier career as a DJ opening for Basement Jaxx and Calvin Harris.
But when he found himself caught up in the war while on a mission to rescue a friend he decided to train as a trauma medic.
“When we first crossed the border, there were 10,000 people queuing. It was like a football stadium emptying but it just didn’t stop. We saw people lying down in the snow and then we realised they were dead. We knew we needed to do more,” he told The National.
“Originally, I went to Ukraine to help one person but my heart wouldn’t let me go home. There were too many children dying, it was awful. I had strangers trying to hand me their children asking me to save them.
“We realised if we could help one person, we could help another and it just snowballed.
“I didn’t envisage any of this. We are not soldiers, we just go off and do our mission and try to save people.
“We try to give the same care as we would if they were our own family members. We have been very successful and are driven by a goal to help.”
Working with a network of international volunteers, they hire planes and equipment and go to the frontline.
To date, they have saved the lives of dozens of medics and troops.
“We started helping evacuate international volunteers when they got hurt. They were like James Bond-style missions, we’d hire helicopters through our contacts to take them to Germany or Poland,” he said.
“We go to the hardest hit places to get the fallen.”
The team rescued British volunteer fighter Shareef Amin from the trenches.
They then had to take him 600 kilometres across Ukraine to get him to the border and a plane to life-saving treatment in the UK.
In another case, they helped US Army Iraq veteran Brian Harlow, who was in Ukraine helping to train troops.
He stepped on a landmine, resulting in the loss of his right lower leg. It took seven hours to evacuate him.
For all their successes, they have dealt with immense sadness.
At Christmas, they helped to repatriate the body of Bristol University graduate Katherine Mielniczukm 26, who went to Ukraine to use her medical skills.
This month, they are planning a mammoth mission to move 130 elderly and orphans from the east of Ukraine to the west.
Midwife's life-saving incubators
Ms Warrington is inspired by her family history.
“My grandfather was in Auschwitz for two years before he was liberated and was a key witness at Nuremberg,” she said.
“My great grandmother and her sister were killed there (Auschwitz), so when the war started two years ago and I saw what was happening, it resonated with me,” she told The National.
“Being a midwife, I couldn’t sit back and watch when I saw the scenes of queues, in the freezing conditions, of children and babies. I speak Polish and I found myself an official place to go to the crossing to help on March 13, 2022.
“I realised we were not seeing any pregnant women, so I started going around and explaining I was a midwife and word spread,” she said.
“Gradually I began helping pregnant women who had been standing for hours on packed trains, in freezing conditions and often had not felt their babies move.
“I was able to give them check-ups and reassure them and check their baby’s heartbeats and the mums would just cry with relief. From there, I started to go to the train station, where people were coming in, to help them directly.”
What was meant to be a three-week mission took up two years of her life.
“I promised my family I would not cross into Ukraine but within a week I took an ambulance full of aid into Mariupol and Lviv to a children’s hospital and started to evacuate children with cancer,” she said.
“We take MOM incubators which are highly portable and do not have to be plugged in, so if a baby is born in a bunker or needs evacuating during the bombing to a place of safety they can be saved.”
The incubators cost £11,500 each and a Rotary Club charity helped to buy them.
Without her team of supporters across the UK, Ms Warrington's work would be impossible.
An army of knitters and fund-raisers
“I support a children’s centre in Kharkiv and I get a monthly cargo of aid from Huddersfield Voices of Ukraine. They ask me what I want and send it over,” she said.
“I have an army of knitters across the country knitting special blankets for the incubators, twiddle muffs for people with dementia, we make baby boxes with hats, bootees and cardigans, toiletries for the mums and knitted blue and yellow hearts with messages for the mums to let them know we are thinking about them.”
This month will be Ms Warrington's 17th mission to Ukraine. Looking into the eyes of the young people she is helping keeps her going.
“All I can see is my grandchildren, my children. It just seems so close to home, and I hope someone like me would get off their backsides and go to help if this was my family,” she said.
Food and weapons for the troops
British volunteer Richard Woodruff was selling advertising for a business magazine when he was moved by a video of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine.
It led to him leaving the UK to go to help feed and supply Ukrainian troops.
“For the first six months, I helped in the kitchens and made dehydrated meals for the troops,” he said.
“They didn’t have enough food and supplies and there were no logistics in place for hundreds of thousands of men. Lots of food was being made by grandmothers in their homes, and I was sent out to deliver it for six months.
“I started up a social media account to appeal for frontline kit and to document my life as a volunteer.’’
With more than 62,000 followers on X, Mr Woodruff raises funds for everything from food parcels and thermal imaging drones to rebuilding schools and homes.
“We find out what they need on the ground in real-time so we can really understand what’s going on. They really need more thermal weapon drones. They can fly up high and view the whole battlefield and see the Russian troops glowing in the dark so they can see if they are running to their positions,” he said.
“I have no regrets about what we are doing,” he said.
“There is not a single day I take off from working towards victory. The first day I will take a break is when the war is over, but only for a day before the rebuilding begins.”
Two years of the Russia-Ukraine war – in pictures
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A soldier of the Ukrainian National Guard holds his position in the Serebryan Forest, in temperatures of -15°C in January 2024, in Kreminna, Donetsk Oblast. Getty Images -
Classmates play with rifles made from Lego blocks after school, in Vysokopillya, December 2023. Getty Images -
Leonid, a 38-year-old Ukrainian soldier suffering from severe mental trauma, cranial trauma and shrapnel wounds, does his physical training session at a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv, in October 2023. Getty Images -
Gravediggers make new graves for the victims of a recent Russian missile strike, at Hroza cemetery, in October 2023. Getty Images -
Oleksander, suffering from a hand injury, relaxes during a speleotherapy session, an alternative medicine respiratory therapy, at a rehabilitation center for soldiers in Kyiv, in October 2023. Getty Images -
Volodymyr assists his wife Anastasia, as she has contractions before the birth of their first baby, at a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, in September 2023. Ukraine’s birth rate since the start of the war the country's birth rate has plummeted by 28 per cent. Getty Images -
Friends and relatives mourn the death of fighter pilot Andrii Pilshchykov, 30, who was killed along with two other pilots in a mid-air plane crash in Kyiv, in August 2023. Getty Images -
Ukrainian recruits salute the flag as they attend a commemorative service marking Ukraine's Independence Day, in August 2023, in a training camp in the south of England. Getty Images -
Damage from a missile that hit the Chernihiv Regional Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theatre, killilng seven people, in August 2023. Getty Images -
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak to the media at the Nato Summit in July 2023, in Vilnius, Lithuania. Getty Images -
People wait for a transfer on a pontoon in a flooded area as the result of the Kakhovka dam destruction in June 2023 in Afanasiivka village, Mykolaiv region. Getty Images -
State workers and Ukrainian military personnel inspect the crater left behind by a missile strike in Dnipro, in May 2023. Getty Images -
A grad missile is launched on the Donetsk fron tline in April 2023. Getty Images -
A Ukrainian sniper with the 28th Brigade moves to a fighting position in a front-line trench facing Russian troops in March 2023 outside of Bakhmut. Getty Images -
A damaged bust of Vladimir Lenin lies in the street in March 2023 in in the strategic town of Lyman. Getty Images -
A member of Ukraine's 79th Air Assault Brigade fires a rocket-propelled grenade at Russian positions near Marinka in February 2023. Reuters -
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses MPs in Westminster Hall, London, in February 2023. Getty Images -
Destroyed buildings 32km west of the front lines in Donetsk in January 2023. Getty Images -
An anti-aircraft gun in January 2023 fires at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk. Reuters -
Destruction in the village of Bohorodychne, Donetsk, in January 2023. AFP -
A Ukrainian artilleryman discards an empty shell on the outskirts of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, in December 2022. AFP -
Children receive presents from a Ukrainian soldier dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve 2022 in Sloviansk. Getty Images -
More than 1,000 missiles and rockets fired by Russian forces collected for cataloguing in Kharkiv in December 2022. Getty Images -
The Metro provides shelter as Russia launches another missile attack on Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, in December 2022. Getty Images -
Children at a PE class in Kyiv after Russia abandoned its attempt to seize the capital in November 2022. Getty Images -
A sniper searches for Russian positions on the bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson in November 2022. Getty Images -
Graffiti by Banksy on a wall among the debris in Borodyanka in November 2022. Getty Images -
Ukrainian flags flutter around graves in a cemetery for soldiers killed in action in Kharkiv in October 2022. Getty Images -
Parts of a drone, which Ukrainian authorities said was Iranian-made, after a Russian strike in Kyiv in October 2022. Reuters -
An elderly woman is helped across a damaged bridge in Bakhmut in October 2022. Getty Images -
Fuel tanks ablaze on damaged sections of the Kerch bridge in Crimea, in October 2022. Reuters -
A destroyed bridge makes crossing the Donets river difficult, in Staryi Saltiv, east of Kharkiv, in September 2022. AFP -
Firefighters at a thermal power plant in Kharkiv damaged by a Russian missile strike in September 2022. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr with his daughter Nikole at Lviv railway station in August 2022. Getty Images -
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and then-British prime minister Boris Johnson read a plaque in Kyiv in August 2022 dedicated to the latter for his support. Getty Images -
Destroyed Russian military equipment on Khreshchatyk street in Kyiv. The materiel was turned into an open-air military museum ahead of Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24. AFP -
Shakhtar Donetsk v Metalist Kharkiv kicks off the Ukrainian Premier League season in August 2022 amid fears of bomb and missile alerts. EPA -
Ukrainian servicemen fire an American-made 155mm M777 howitzer in July 2022 in the Kharkiv area. EPA -
A bomb crater on the Antonovsky bridge across the Dnipro river in Kherson, July 2022. AFP -
Maksym and Andrii with plastic guns at a 'checkpoint' they set up while playing in Kharkiv, July 2022. AP -
Ukrainian troops on Snake Island in June 2022. Reuters -
A woman evacuated from an area of conflict in June 2022 contemplates what the next move might be. AP -
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Kyiv in June 2022. Getty Images -
Graves in Irpin cemetery, May 2022. Getty Images -
A Ukrainian soldier trapped within the besieged Azovstal Iron and Steel Works complex in Mariupol in May 2022. Reuters -
The wreckage of a Russian helicopter in a bomb-cratered field in Biskvitne, May 2022. Getty Images -
A Ukrainian army officer inspects a grain warehouse shelled by Russian forces in May 2022 near Novovorontsovka, Kherson. Getty Images -
A boy from Mariupol arriving at an evacuation point in Zaporizhzhia in May 2022. Getty Images -
A Russian serviceman on guard outside Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in May 2022. AFP -
Oksana searches for salvageable items on the destroyed second floor of her home in Hostomel, April 2022. Getty Images -
A floral memorial wall in Lviv for Ukrainian civilians killed during the Russian invasion, April 2022. Getty Images -
People fleeing Lviv, eastern Ukraine, in April 2022, wait for a bus that will take them to Poland. Getty Images -
A Russian soldier patrols a bombed Mariupol theatre in April 2022, as Moscow intensified its campaign to take the strategic port city. AFP -
A Ukrainian celebrates success in Hostomel in April 2022. Getty Images -
Julia Palovskaya reads to children during an air raid drill in the basement shelter at a preschool in Lviv, April 2022. Getty Images -
Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Bucha in April 2022, where hundreds of bodies were found in the street and it was claimed the Russian leadership was responsible for killing civilians. AFP -
Oleh Smolin, 23, who suffered leg injuries from Russian shelling in April 2022, in hospital in Chuhuiv. Getty Images -
Fleeing refugees arrive at the border train station of Zahony, Hungary, in March 2022. Getty Images -
A father says goodbye to his daughter on an evacuation train about to leave Odesa in March 2022. AFP -
February 24 will be a year since Russia started the Ukraine war. The National picks out the most powerful images from the conflict. AFP -
Ukrainians under a destroyed bridge as they try to cross the Irpin river on the outskirts of Kyiv in March 2022. AP -
People cram into Kyiv station to catch trains to Poland or to western parts of Ukraine, shortly after the initial invasion in February 2022. Getty Images -
A demonstration in support of Ukraine in Trafalgar Square, London, February 2022 . Getty Images -
Russian army vehicles in Armyansk, Crimea, in February 2022. AFP -
Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on February 25, 2022, in a video on Facebook. He said 'we are all here', shortly after the Russian invasion began. AFP -
A residential building damaged by a missile strike in Kyiv in February 2022. Getty Images -
A metro station in Kyiv in February 2022, crowded with people trying to escape the invasion. AFP -
A police officer addresses people gathered to protest against the invasion of Ukraine, in central Saint Petersburg, Russia, February 2022. AFP -
A protester in support of Ukraine, in Berlin, Germany, in February 2022. Getty Images -
Ukrainian soldiers prepare to repel an attack in Ukraine's Lugansk region on February 24, 2022. AFP -
Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on February 24, 2022, after Russia launched a full-scale invasion. AFP -
A mass exodus from Kyiv after pre-offensive missile strikes by Russian armed forces on February 24, 2022. Getty Images -
Security personnel inspect the remains of a shell in Kyiv on February 24, 2022, soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine. AFP -
CCTV footage shows Russian military equipment crossing a Crimea border checkpoint on February 24, 2022. AFP -
Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin early on February 24, 2022, when he announced a 'military operation' in Ukraine. AFP
