The organisation Rescue.now is helping evacuate civilians from Kharkiv and bringing humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian city which has been under attack severely since the beginning of the war in the country, one of the volunteers, Nazy Kozirieva, told N1.

Kozirieva spoke to N1 from Poltava, which is some 140 kilometres away from Kharkiv and is one of the safer areas citizens are being evacuated to.

“The city, as you know, is being bombed and attacked severely,” she said, adding that Kharkiv is where she lived, studied and worked, and that she had to leave the city 22 days ago.

“This morning, me and my family made a decision to move again, probably to western Ukraine, but our plans are not clear yet,” she said, adding that warning sirens can be heard frequently.

“I’m not sure that we will feel safe no matter where we go right now,” she said.

Kozirieva explained that about 35 or 40 percent of Kharkiv is severely damaged or destroyed and that those who remain in the city are mostly “elderly people or women with small children or families that simply have nowhere else to go.”

“And those are the people that we try to help,” she said. “Our main goal is to evacuate as many people from Kharkiv as possible.”

She explained that the organisation does this with the help of people in Ukraine and from other countries, through donations.

Kozirieva also added that the organisation not only evacuates people but also their pets.

“When our drivers go back to Kharkiv from Poltava and Dnjipro, we send humanitarian cargos with them,” she said, explaining that volunteers also cook and deliver food to shelters in the city.