“A moment before the occupation, he rescued 57 people from the line of fire”: story of policeman from Donetsk Oblast

Dmytro Mazurov, a police officer in Lyman hromada in Donetsk Oblast, helps evacuate people living near the frontline. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories - ed.]  He has been on duty under heavy fire and evacuated residents of frontline villages even during the Russian offensive. And when the Russian troops were only a kilometre away, he managed to evacuate more than 50 people. 

The police officer is a member of the White Angel group, the National Police of Ukraine said. 

Dmytro Mazurov serves six frontline settlements: his native Torske, Zarichne, Terny, Yampolivka, Kolodiazi, and Ivanivka.  "I was born in Torske. Before the full-scale war, it was home to about 750 people, a lot of children and young people.

Now the village is almost gone, there is complete devastation, up to 120 residents left," the man says. 

Dmytro has been a police officer since 2018 and a sheriff since 2020. He considers helping people his main task.  The police officer said that when most of the villages were occupied, and the Russian troops were a kilometre away from the village of Zarichne, more than 50 people gathered near the village centre.

They wanted to evacuate.  "I started taking out citizens, especially children, in my official car, a Renault Duster, under fire. We were taking 6-7 people per car.

I had to make eight trips to get everyone out.  And then I got a call from the village head: two more elderly women had managed to break through the river from the already occupied Torske and were running towards me in Zarichne. So, I went again and picked them up.

There was a battle going on, artillery and tanks were firing, and we could hear machine gun fire," Dmytro recalls. The officer returned to service immediately after the liberation of the area. Back then, people lived without electricity, shops were closed, and there was no connection with the outside world.

"And this connection, as well as humanitarian aid - food, medicine - people received all this through us, the police. In particular, through the unit where I worked, the White Angel," he says. Now the villages where the policeman works are suffering from Russian attacks every day.

Terny and Torske are located one and a half to two kilometres from the frontline. Torske is also hit by Russian aircraft.  Dmytro says that after the Russians attacked the houses where people were staying, he had to work together with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

They had to remove a lot of rubble and retrieve the bodies of the dead. "Many lives were saved. Over the past year, we have taken out all the children who lived near the contact line - 32 children.

The parents did not want to leave until the last moment. We travelled and persuaded them to save their children. We found places all over Ukraine where they could live for free," says the policeman.

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