An American military veteran trapped in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion is now home after receiving help from fellow veterans leading a non-profit that extracts citizens trapped abroad.
Creed Burleson, 62, is an Army veteran from North Carolina. Burleson checked into a Kyiv hotel on business just two days before Russia’s invasion. He soon found himself sheltering in the hotel’s garage during air raid sirens.
“There was no way out because the trains were so packed,” he told McClatchy.
Burleson reached out to Project Dynamo for assistance to leave Ukraine. The organization had come to notoriety just months earlier for its efforts to extract American citizens from Afghanistan following President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal on August 31.
The organization describes its name as “an umbrella term encompassing two operations — Digital Dunkirk and Dynamo II. Both efforts are being run by extraordinary civilians with no ties to the U.S. government attempting to do the impossible.”
In Burleson’s case, the “impossible” was to extract him from Urkaine’s war-torn capital.
According to American Military News, Burleson received a text message on March 2 with four hours’ notice. He was soon boarding a bus where he was required to shut down his mobile phone and other electronics.
Burleson is not the only person the non-profit has helped to escape from Ukraine’s war zones.
Five surrogate mothers who are carrying children for American parents were among 60 people that the rescue group recently helped. They’re currently staying in an undisclosed location within Ukraine.
“We’re just relieved these missions were successful and with all involved safely out of harm’s way,” Project Dynamo co-founder Bryan Stern said in a statement.
“[T]hese rescues of civilians, including pregnant surrogates, are becoming even more imperative and more difficult given the dynamic threat environment,” he added.
The report added that the rescue organization has led five successful operations to date in Ukraine. The locations have included Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kherson, Nickolaev, and Kakhovka.
Jen Wilson, the chief operating officer of Army Week Association, noted that many Americans relied on Project Dynamo’s work to help citizens and those who had assisted the U.S. military to escape Afghanistan after it fell under Taliban control.
Wilson said during a Fox News report in August that the airport in Kabul “is likely no longer an option to get our guys out, so we’ve pivoted, and Project Dynamo is now our way to get them out. We’re going to open the northern corridor, we’re going to set up our own beachhead, and we’re going to start getting them out …”
“It just crushed me to hear you say that you’re not going to make it out,” Wilson told Carl and promised again that they would get him out. “If it is the last thing I do, we’re going to get you out,” she said.
Carl, an Afghan man who assisted the U.S. military for a decade, was a witness to the Afghan bombing in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. military personnel and more than 150 other people shortly before the Biden administration’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan.