About "White Angels"
The history of the evacuation group “White Angel” began weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the beginning, rescue teams came to Marinka to evacuate the injured, but one day, as the shelling intensified, they stopped coming, recalls Artiom, the police chief of “White Angel”. Since then, the officers themselves drove to Marinka from a neighboring town in an ambulance to deliver food and bring people in need to safety. The people who remained in Marinka eventually gave the white ambulance the name “White Angel.” Later, the evacuation group adopted this name. The “White Angel”-Team of Marinka was the first, later four more Teams have been established, working near Bakhmut, Lyman and in further south.
ARTEM SHUS, VASYL PIPA, RUSTAM LUKUMSKY
In late February 2023, we traveled to Eastern Ukraine. Our original goal was to capture some footage of Marinka from a distance. The front line ran right through the city, and by that time, Marinka was already in ruins. Vasyl, a policeman and a member of the “White Angel” evacuation group, took us to a suburb of Marinka. We couldn’t go any further because the risk of coming under fire was too great. In the evening at the police station, Vasyl gave us a hard drive with his helmet camera footage. Back in Leipzig, we reviewed over 40 hours of video material, most of which was shot in Marinka, documenting the city’s demise and the suffering of its residents.
A few months later, we traveled to Eastern Ukraine again, interviewing the “White Angel” members and survivors from Marinka.
People of “White Angel – the end of Marinka”
