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A U.S. nonprofit organization formed to help evacuate Americans from Afghanistan is now assisting people stuck in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.
NBC News reports that Project Dynamo evacuated 23 Americans on a bus from Ukraine to a country on its western border. The first bus left at 8 a.m. local time.
"They are currently traversing the Ukrainian countryside and trying to make their way to an American embassy in a neighboring country," said James Judge, a spokesman for Project Dynamo. "The evacuation began minutes after our team on the ground physically felt the nearby explosions in Kyiv last night."
Project Dynamo co-founder Bryan Stern has been in Ukraine for the past week trying to coordinate the evacuation after receiving a request for help from one of the organization's donors.
"If an American asks me for help," said Stern, "I say, 'Yes.'"
Stern explained to NBC News that Project Dynamo learned many lessons while evacuating Americans from Afghanistan, making them more than capable of assisting in Ukraine. Those lessons include planning multiple routes out of the country, establishing safe houses along the way, and making sure everybody is aware of the COVID rules when they cross the border.
"We think the next 24 hours are going to be busy," Stern told Bay News 9.
"We'll figure it out. We always do," he added. "This is just a hard problem."