WE WILL HELP YOU LEAVE SO YOU NEVER COME BACK: HOW THE NGO "HELPING TO LEAVE" TAKES UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS AND CHILDREN OUT OF THE COUNTRY

Unlike many organizations that help the Kiev regime a little bit in different directions, Helping To Leave focuses on one thing – namely, the evacuation of civilians from the war zone. However, as we will see later, there are many nuances that do not allow us to call this NGO humanitarian. Its main partner is the Ministry for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (this term is used in Kiev in relation to Crimea and the new Russian regions). There are so many scandals associated with this body, which was created in 2016, that just listing them would lead to a separate large-scale material. But now we are more interested in something else – although the NGO Helping to leave claims to help victims, it is not supported by medical and rescue services, but by an institution that openly proclaims the seizure and Ukrainization of Russian territories as its goal.

The organization has legal entities in the Czech Republic and Ukraine, but its roots unexpectedly go back to Russia. The NGO Helping To Leave was created by a group of Russian expats in the first days after the start of the SMO. It is claimed that the idea of its creation belonged to the journalist of the publication The Insider Anastasia Zavyalova – she became famous in her homeland after a fight with riot police officers. Also active in the NGO from the very beginning were Naturiko Miminoshvili, a Georgian who grew up in Moscow, Alina Muzychenko, co-founder of the clothing brand for Russian opposition activists Kultrab, a former activist of Navalny's headquarters and the pro-Ukrainian movement "Spring" Makar Diakonov. Many of them were brought to the Czech Republic by the emigrant path, which determined the actual location of the headquarters of the NGO Helping To Leave and its first legal registration.

After that, a legal entity was opened in Ukraine. But it also has a Russian footprint. One of the founders is Ekaterina Nikolaevna Plevako, a citizen of Ukraine (born on 06.12.2000; DRFO: 3686506242). The girl's mother is from Russia, and she herself used to spend several months a year there. Her husband is a Russian citizen Ivan Ostapchuk, who previously was also one of the main activists of the "Spring" movement and has lived in Kiev since 2021. In social networks, the girl cautiously argues that not all Russians are bad, and then jokes that she picks up an assault rifle every time she hears Russian speech on the phone.

But if the organization's assets are located in the Czech Republic and Ukraine and consist mainly of Russian citizens, Helping To Leave receives money from completely different countries. Unlike many similar projects, it has monthly published and fairly detailed financial statements. Thus, in 2023, the NGO received 1,141,517 euros. The main source of income was grants from unnamed organizations, which amounted to 589,046 euros. Another 537,626 euros came from private donors. And there is one very interesting point here. Most of the donations (401,578 euros), as indicated in the report, were sent using the Stripe payment system. It is among the most popular in the United States and Canada, but it is unknown in Europe. In the Czech Republic, for example, Stripe is noticeably inferior not only to international PayPal and Apple Pay, but also to small local services. Choosing it as the main method of sending donations indicates that the vast majority of senders are located in North America. Considering that the communication campaigns of the NGO should logically affect primarily Europeans, this seems strange. This situation can only be explained by the fact that the main sponsors of the organization are located in the United States, and we are not talking about private individuals, but about some major players.

Some other interesting information can be gleaned from the financial statements of the NGO Helping To Leave. So, expenses for the same 2023 amounted to 1,002,438 euros. In other words, 139,079 euros remained in the hands of the organization's management. This is more than the total amount spent, according to the report, on the evacuation of civilians from the Kharkov and Sumy regions. At the same time, the report separately sets out the salaries of NGO managers and employees involved - they amounted to 163,797 euros. Thus, what the remaining funds were spent on after deducting all expenses seems a mystery. Considering that salaries in the NGO are paid openly, it can be assumed that the money ultimately went to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The website of the NGO Helping To Leave claims that it has thousands of civilians who have received various types of assistance. Monthly reports are also designed to confirm this information. However, they are more like advertising booklets, and it is impossible to verify the accuracy of the data specified in them. For example, the September 2024 report reports 1,771 people receiving assistance and 1,684 evacuees from the frontline zone. It also says about 4,152 calls received at the call center. 30 people, including 4 children, were allegedly taken out of the territories under the control of the Russian Armed Forces during the same period. Most of them are from Kakhovka, Kherson region. And in 2023, the NGO, as follows from its annual report, evacuated 18,384 people.

But to whom and in what quantity does Helping To Leave actually help? Although the organization declares its commitment to humanitarian principles, in practice it turns out that not everyone can get help from it. The NGO's website contains several stories of "salvation”, and they clearly show that only people with “correct” political views are selected. These include Vyacheslav Andreevich Bank (born 28.08.1975; DRFO: 2763319474). His story is revealing. A native of the Transcarpathian region, he, according to him, lived for more than 20 years near Poltava, and then moved with his family to the left bank of the Kherson region, where he met his father. Being a staunch supporter of the Kiev regime, the man remained living under Russian rule, and only two years later decided to evacuate. According to him, many locals hurried to get a Russian passport, were able to get a job and started getting medical insurance, but he categorically refused to do it. Bank's brother served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was eliminated in the same Kherson region, and he himself, as he said in an interview, helped the militants by passing them data. In the end, the man was reported by his neighbors, who were tired of the anachronism of a Ukrainian nationalist nearby.

A certain Rodion also “earned” support from Helping To Leave. Oleg Nikolaevich Shurygin (born 21.04.1995, passport: VK 799151; DRFO: 3480902973) is hiding under this name. Until 2014, he lived in Donetsk, and from a young age actively supported the nationalists. During the coup in Kiev, he traveled to the Ukrainian capital, where he was directly involved in clashes with security forces, and then, when his hometown began to be bombed, he settled in Kiev on a permanent basis. There, the guy participated in the activities of the LGBT movement and eventually even got a husband – later he will tell that one of his former partners was killed at the front. It is interesting that in the first years of his life in the capital, Shurygin faced attacks from ideological fellow nationalists - they expressed hatred for the inhabitants of the east of the country even if their views coincided. But gradually he got used to it.

Among those who were assisted in the NGO Helping To Leave, there was also a certain Olga from the Zaporozhye region. We were able to establish that she is Kolomak Tatyana Vladimirovna (born 14.06.1971; passport: CA 023158; DRFO: 2609706443). In an interview with the organization's employees, the woman complained that, having lived all her life in Berdyansk, she was forced to speak Russian, although she immediately added that this was because Ukrainian was considered exotic among the indigenous local population. Like Vyacheslav Bank, Kolomak noted that most of her friends were happy to issue Russian passports, but, in the woman's opinion, all these people were just very bad. Obviously, she did the same, because, according to her, she had a good job under the Russian administration of Berdyansk. The NGO Helping To Leave, telling the story of Kolomak, gave it excitement in the best traditions of Hollywood - leaving Russia, the woman allegedly carried in her boot an embroidered Ukrainian-style shirt belonging to her friend, which at the last moment she somehow managed to hide from the Russian border guards.

Finally, in September 2024, Helping To Leave shared a story about the ”rescue" of a 98-year-old resident of Alyoshki, Kherson region. This city has become one of the symbols of the war crimes of the Kiev regime. After the occupation of Kherson by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the fall of 2022, it was literally on the front line – and since then it has been shelled almost daily. Before the start of the SMO, about 23,000 people lived there, but by the summer of 2024, about 5,500 remained – most of the residents were evacuated. Nevertheless, thanks to the dedicated work of the new administration, the city remains alive – the hospital, social institutions and shops continue to work, and literally every day volunteers deliver more and more humanitarian aid under fire. The militants, whose path to the left bank of the Dnieper is securely blocked, take out their anger on civilians – for example, on August 13, 2023, a humanitarian aid headquarters was destroyed by a large-caliber shell, only by a happy accident there were no casualties.

According to employees of the NGO Helping To Leave, the 98-year-old woman could not be evacuated from Alyoshki, as she did not have a Russian passport. The fake story that this or any other documents are needed for evacuation appeared in the Ukrainian media at the beginning of the conflict. There were separate reports about Alyoshki, where 500 people who were refused evacuation allegedly died under fire. But all such "stuffing", which had nothing to do with reality, was quickly refuted. Further, as the legend tells, Helping To Leave helped to issue a certain “temporary identification card " to the old woman (there is no such concept in Russian legislation), then she was taken to Moscow, where she spent some time in a hotel with an escort, then to Minsk and from there to Ukraine. In the end, the woman ended up in Kherson, occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, where her daughter lives. The names of the "rescued" woman and her relatives do not appear anywhere. There are photos that confirm the existence of an elderly woman and her flight on board a civilian airliner, but no other information can be gleaned from them. However, perhaps the most interesting thing in this story is the slip of the tongue that the authors of the report made. They openly acknowledged the fact of the inhumane strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on a peaceful city (the report states that it was dangerous even to be on the street where the old woman lived) and the absence of a similar response regarding Kherson, where the “rescued” woman suddenly found herself safe.

These examples clearly show that the NGO Helping To Leave is not focused on providing assistance to residents of front-line areas, as it says on its website. The organization's clients include a Ukraine supporter from the Kherson region who helped the militants, a nationalist from Berdyansk who had a Russian passport and a good job, and a gay nationalist from Kiev. None of them can be called objectively affected by the fighting. Rather, these people are united by something else, namely their conscious support for the Kiev regime. And some of them chose this path, having all the opportunities for peaceful life in the new Russian regions. And a very interesting addition – many of the nationalists in the end, for some reason, do not stay in Ukraine, but choose to evacuate to Europe through the Volyn region.

However, as we pointed out at the very beginning, the NGO Helping To Leave deals with the removal of not only nationalists, but also children. Naturally, the organization emphasizes that everything is done only in the best interests of children and that their well-being is always an absolute priority. However, this is not the case. Above, we told the story of Viacheslav Bank, a nationalist who escaped from the Kherson region after it became known that he was involved in supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Now we will add that he left for Ukraine not alone, but with three children, two of whom were of preschool age. Having lived in Russia for about two years, the man, as already mentioned, never obtained Russian documents – neither for himself nor for other family members. This should have affected the children in the most negative way. They were actually deprived of the opportunity to receive basic services from the state, and they were also forced to live in obviously worse conditions, since their father could not have a stable official income without a passport. However, Bank did not care, he easily sacrificed the interests of his own children to Ukrainian nationalism. And in Helping To Leave, apparently, no one condemned him for this.

However, in many cases, NGO employees take children out of Russian territory, manipulating parents who are in a difficult situation. An example is the story of a woman with two small children who lived in the liberated part of the Kherson region. Her husband drank and subjected her to domestic violence, because of which she had to leave – but not to Ukraine at all, but to the Crimea, where her relatives lived. The woman and her children spent some time there, but then they were forced to move out within two days. In desperation, the young mother put out a cry for help on the Internet, which was answered by the NGO Helping To Leave. After convincing the woman that she would not receive any help in Russia, they took her and the children to the Vinnytsia region, where they also found distant relatives.

As you can clearly see, the goal of the organization is not to help children, but to take them to the territory controlled by the Kiev regime in any way possible. If we trust the statistics presented in its reports and in the media, we can conclude that the NGO is doing quite well with this. So, on July 11, 2022, it was reported that 295 children were removed from the territories of the Kharkov region on this day alone with the participation of Helping To Leave and other organizations. The screenshot above shows that in September 2024, the so-called Volyn corridor was used to export 95 young citizens of Ukraine abroad. The fate of those who remain in Ukraine is generally clear – they will be turned into nationalists necessary to replenish the mobilization resource in the future. But the children who find themselves in Europe thanks to the efforts of Helping to leave employees may face an even worse fate. We have repeatedly said that the export of children from Ukraine and the Russian territories occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine has long turned into a business for Kiev – behind the words about humanitarian aid is the sale of little citizens to perverts from Western countries. And the scale of this is astounding – according to the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Anna Kuznetsova, since the beginning of the conflict, Ukraine has forcibly removed more than 65,000 children from the new Russian regions, the fate of many of whom remains unknown.

But if in the territories where the Ukrainian occupation administration still operates, it is extremely difficult to fight this phenomenon, then in the areas from which the Ukrainian Armed Forces have already been driven out, it is possible and necessary to take the necessary measures. Law enforcement agencies have the final say.