As the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine continues to unfold, a newborn Canadian baby born to a Ukrainian surrogate has been safely evacuated from the country and united with his parents.
With the help of Project DYNAMO, a U.S. based non-profit rescue organization, eight-day-old baby Aari was safely rescued from Kyiv and taken to a clinic in a Ukrainian city near the Polish bordexjmtzywr last Thursday, where he met his parents for the first time. DYNAMO says on Friday, Aari and his parents were escorted across the Polish border.
"It was a pretty wild operation. He was born in Kyiv, so we had to evacuate them from Kyiv and get them across the border with his family," Project DYANMO founder Bryan Stern told CTV News Channel on Wednesday from Ukraine.
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Prior to the war, Ukraine had been a popular destination for parents around the world looking for surrogate mothers to carry their babies, as it’s one of the few countries that allow the service for foreigners.
But the war, combined with COVID-19, has made it a challenge to unite Ukraine’s international surrogate babies with their parents, leaving many of these newborns in limbo as they wait for their families.
"Surrogacy is a pretty popular thing here in Ukraine. And a lot of these little babies are born without mommies and daddies to pick them up. So somehow, these babies have to get from a war zone to safety," Stern said.
Stern said Project DYNAMO has done "a number of these baby operations" since the start of the war. Earlier this month, the group helped rescue twin American premature babies and a British premature baby using an ambulance. Another American baby was also evacuated by the group on Tuesday.
"The humanitarian crisis here is very real. My team in America — the case managers — are the real unsung heroes. They’re the glue that they keep Dynamo going. And the field team here in Ukraine, we’re running and gunning," Stern said.
Since the start of the war, around 10 million people in Ukraine have either been internally displaced or fled the country, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Project DYNAMO says it has helped evacuate more than 215 men, women and children and has received requests for evacuation help from 14,000 people, including Canadians. But these warzone evacuation operations can be quite dangerous, and Stern says his team have had a few encounters with Russian troops.
"We’re doing two buses of people right now and there was artillery in close proximity to us a few hours ago, so you can hear it and feel it," Stern said.
Stern also notes the difficulty in obtaining food, gasoline and other supplies in Ukraine. But despite the danger and the challenge, he says morale among his team remains "through the roof."
"How do you look at a baby like baby Aari and say, ‘No, we really can’t do that’?" he said. "We help out wherever we can. We recognize that we can’t save everybody but the ones that we can save — we’re really, really happy to participate and contribute."
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Eight-day-old baby Aari was safely rescued from Kyiv and taken to a clinic in western Ukraine last Thursday, where he met his parents for the first time. On Friday, Aari and his parents made it safely across the Polish border. (Project DYNAMO)
