Help Us Put Our Rescuers in an Armoured Vehicle — Before the Next Mission

Every day, the war creates new victims, and animals are not spared. Hungry, abandoned, living beneath the ruins of destroyed homes, many were once someone’s beloved pets. Now they’re terrified by the constant sound of shelling, often wounded by explosions with no one left to treat them. Too many don’t survive at all.

The people going in to save them shouldn’t have to risk their own survival to do it. If we act now, while your gift counts twice, we can change that.

Donations are being matched 2x, up to a total of $20,000.

Until October 15, every donation is being matched dollar-for-dollar, meaning every gift you give today gets us twice as close to the one thing standing between our rescuers and the next mission: a properly armoured vehicle.

The need is clear…

On August 31, one of ROLDA’s partner rescue vehicles was hit by a drone while on mission in the Kramatorsk region, one of the most dangerous, most contested corridors our rescuers drive through. Two rescuers were on board: one Ukrainian, one French volunteer. The explosion tore through the right side of the vehicle. Both were injured and hospitalised, first in Kramatorsk for emergency first aid, then transferred to Dnipro for specialised care. Both are alive today only because of the protective equipment they were wearing when the blast hit.

The vehicle they were driving offered them little protection, but as they do each and every time, all they thought about was the animals.

In the moments after the blast, there was no one else coming. No backup vehicle. No second team waiting nearby. Just two injured rescuers, a destroyed vehicle, and the same silence that follows every strike in a warzone. Ruslan has said that in that moment, he genuinely didn’t know if this was the end for him, a thought no one should have to carry home from a mission to save an animal. It’s a fear that doesn’t discriminate between rescuers. Whoever gets behind the wheel next, Ruslan or someone else, faces the same odds in the same unprotected vehicle. That’s not a risk any of ROLDA’s rescuers should have to accept.

ROLDA works with the only rescue team that evacuates animals from near the frontline, relocating them to safer shelters within Ukraine or abroad. They go where no one else will, not once, but up to three times a week, risking their own lives each time. They save everything that can be saved: dogs, cats, goats, rabbits, chinchillas, parrots… and sometimes, people too, those who decide to flee in the final moment.

Since the war began, these evacuation missions have saved over 27,000 animals. But the drone strike on August 31 made something painfully clear: the vehicles carrying out these missions were never built to withstand what this war now throws at them. ROLDA has said plainly that further missions into Kramatorsk and other frontline areas will not proceed without a second-hand fully armoured vehicle. Not because the will to go isn’t there. Because it would be reckless to ask anyone to go without one.

This isn’t urgency for its own sake; it’s the reality on the ground. A gift given today, while matched up to $20,000, doubles our ability to fund a second-hand armoured vehicle: not new, but reliable enough to get our rescuers in and out safely, built to withstand what an ordinary van cannot.

Our rescuers have already shown they won’t stop going in. The least we can do is make sure the vehicle they’re driving gives them a real chance of coming back out.