A daring Ukrainian volunteer has shot first-person footage of himself rescuing civilians from the ‘horror’ of Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
Denys Khrystov’s videos including a ‘miracle’ escape from a Russian drone attack when he had to run for his life after spotting it flying overhead.
He told Metro that he saw ‘death with my own eyes’ in one of his dramatic clips from the all-out invasion which reaches the three-year mark today.
Another tense moment involved a man saying he didn’t want to leave his ruined house after the rescuer dashed in, ‘because I still have half of it.’
Some of Deny’s evacuations have taken place as enemy fire has struck around him, forcing him to take cover.
Despite risking his life, the 41-year-old aid worker, who was born in the Amur region of far east Russia but grew up in Ukraine, views the civilians he rescues as the brave ones.
‘I see death, destruction, constant pain, people’s struggle with their fear, I see heroism – because leaving your home is heroic,ʼ he said.
The film-maker, who records from his phone and a GoPro on his tactical helmet, built a career as a TV presenter in Ukraine.
He previously delivered humanitarian aid, such as food and sanitary supplies, to frontline areas in the Donbas before beginning his life-saving work evacuating civilians.
Denys responds to requests from families of people who have become stranded due to the changing battlefield situation, with many being elderly or otherwise unable or unwilling to leave their homes.
Some have been left with no mobile phone or internet coverage due to their proximity to the frontline and are in danger of being cut off from outside help altogether.
Denys’ missions have included many fraught moments in these bombed-out neighbourhoods where Russian drones, shellfire or missiles could strike at any moment.
One video shot earlier this month shows the responder walking by a severely damaged shopping centre in Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk region heavily targeted by advancing Russian forces.
Wearing a helmet and flak jacket, he pans his phone camera around to catch a white object flying in the sky before running for cover as an explosion sounds nearby.
‘One sunny day, I came to get an evacuation order,’ Denys said.
‘I left my car because it was no longer safe to drive. I walked through the market and saw a small white plane flying, I thought it was a drone.
‘After that stress, my right eye was red. I saw death with my own eyes. It flew in front of me.
‘By some miracle, it flew in the other direction.
‘But the local who was walking with me did not even blink, his sense of danger was so atrophied.’
Another video taken in the embattled city shows a resident on the stairwell of an apartment block where the ground floor has been reduced to a charred ruin in a severely damaged neighbourhood.
The clip shot earlier this month shows the man refusing to leave after Denys and a Ukrainian soldier dash in to save him.
‘We received a request from a woman to evacuate a man,’ Denys said.
‘We found him and we asked him: “Are you going to leave?” He replied: “No!” When we said he didn’t have his house any more he replied that he still had half of it.’
On his Instagram account, Denys said: ‘We went almost straight into hell to save this guy. His wife is waiting, his grandchildren are waiting.
‘But he has other plans — for life or for death.’
Denys, from Kyiv, also shared that evacuations of people unwilling to leave are ‘exhausting’ and he decided to share the footage to counter Russian propaganda that nothing is being done for civilians in frontline areas.
Covering more than a million kilometres since the all-out attack was launched, his missions have taken him into wrecked neighbourhoods and along roads where Russian drones attack civilian targets.
However the relief worker has found that the most difficult task is persuading people who are in imminent danger to leave their homes.
‘At first, I thought I had chosen the easiest path,’ he said of his humanitarian work.
‘But after working alongside the military on evacuations, I realised just how difficult it truly is.
‘It is difficult not to drive into the danger zone and evacuate, it is difficult to persuade, gain trust, and convince people that it is safe to go with you.’
The dangers were starkly demonstrated in January when British volunteer Edward Scott was seriously injured while evacuating civilians from the city.
The 28-year-old former sailor, from Dorset, who was working for Base UA, needed to have his left arm and leg amputated after a Russian drone struck an armoured rescue vehicle he was driving.
Denys weighed the fine line between life and death in philosophical terms.
‘The final destination is very different for each volunteer,’ he said.
‘Some have already met it, unfortunately, while others are more fortunate and continue their journey.’
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In a clip showing the compassionate nature of his work, the rescuer helps an elderly lady to put her coat on and walk out of her bomb and missile-scarred residential district. She was one of 12 people he helped to rescue on the same day in the city, working alongside the police ‘white angels’ who are tasked with evacuating civilians.
In December 2023, and with rubble still burning in the vicinity, Denys evacuated elderly residents, including a woman aged 84, from a shattered district in the Kupiansk region.
He exclaims ‘God what horror’ and asks why his innocent people are being punished as shells fall nearby.
Asked why he continues to risk his life, Denys replied: ‘Once you start, there is no turning back. Perhaps I have already become addicted to emotions and a little bit of adrenaline.
‘What drives me? When I witness the emotions of families reuniting.’
Pokrovsk is an important logistics hub and a target for Russian troops advancing from multiple directions.
Many of those being evacuated from the city are becoming refugees for a second time, having already fled their homes in other parts of the Donbas.
‘There are two roads leading into the city and they are under attack,’ Denys said. ‘The Russian drones do not choose whether it is a military vehicle or a civilian one.
‘The situation changes every 10 to 15 minutes. So I could be driving along and everything was calm and then a drone would burn someone’s car.’
Denys told of Moscow’s forces operating a scorched earth policy when they cannot seize a settlement.
He has repeatedly filmed himself trying to save lives in apocalyptic scenes of death and destruction.
‘Two months ago, the Russian military started destroying residential areas closer to their positions, and then they got so advanced that they thought they would invade the city without any resistance,’ Denys said.
‘However, the Ukrainian army is doing everything to prevent this from happening. This is repeated constantly. If the Russian military cannot take a settlement, they simply destroy it.’
The content producer is bearing witness to the appalling destruction on the ground at a time when Donald Trump’s administration is negotiating with Russia over an end to the war, with the US president aiming a series of verbal attacks at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including that he is a ‘dictator’ and has ‘no cards’ to play in his country’s future.
‘Like every Ukrainian, like every conscious person, I have a negative attitude towards such messages,’ Denys said.
‘I am not a political expert, I only do what I can do and I believe that I am doing it very well. I hope that our president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will have the strength and wisdom to give the right answer because we all see that Trump’s cabinet is provoking him.
‘We live in such a weird time when the whole world sees Russia’s crimes, but at the moment it might ban calling them an aggressor.
‘It’s surreal – to prohibit calling the aggressor an aggressor.’
Denys spoke in London to promote his documentary, 1% of the War, featuring stories from the last days of the battle for Avdiivka, a Ukrainian city in Donetsk which was captured by Russia just over a year ago.
He admitted having little knowledge of the war in the Donbas which began with the outset of Russian military aggression in 2014 — until the failed assault on Kyiv began three years ago today.
‘When I went to bed on the 23rd of February 2022, I had no idea that I would wake up and military battles would be fought near Kyiv,’ he said.
‘When they say they will not attack the Baltic states, how can you believe it? We must unite and not be afraid. If Ukraine has shown that we can fight back, why can’t the rest of Europe do the same?’
As talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine’s future continue, Russia is reportedly intensifying drone strikes and reconnaissance in its grinding effort to advance on Pokrovsk.
Denys said that he has ‘seen more than 1% of the war’, with much of the devastation he has witnessed and shared with the world being repeated elsewhere in his homeland.
But he is still optimistic despite the horrors he has witnessed.
‘Let’s talk after our victory,’ he said.
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