JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida Urgent Rescue (FUR) has been in Ukraine, helping rescue abandoned pets or animals stuck in shelters, taking them out of the country and getting them to safety.
But News4JAX has learned the rules for them have changed.
A month ago, we learned they were part of the volunteer animal rescue teams from Florida who traveled to the war-torn country. And we’ve just learned their mission now includes rescuing families with pets.
When they first started, it was easy for the volunteers to cross the border into Poland with the rescued animals. But now, volunteers say, it’s not as simple.
“Countries like Poland said you have to have a Ukrainian that owns the animals, bring the animals out. You can’t just bring out random animals,” explained Caroline Lingaitis, with FUR.
As a result, these volunteers from Florida found themselves not only rescuing and relocating animals, but also the owners of those animals. They recently rescued two families with pets and drove the families to Germany. The families were desperate to relocate to a safer country with their pets.
“They don’t even speak German. And they didn’t know anybody,” Lingaitis said.
Despite the new rules in place, volunteers were able to rescue two cats from an American who lives in Ukraine but was out of the county when the Russian invasion started. They transported a dog from an Eastern Ukraine shelter that had a family waiting to adopt it in Poland. And they were able to transport sick and injured dogs to safe havens in the Western part of Ukraine, which has seen very little violence.
One of the teams from Florida has been rescuing animals in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital city that has come under Russian attack. Teams outside Kyiv are monitoring everything happening there.
“They were asked to go to an area nine hours north of where they currently are, but that’s also really close to the action and as much as we would like to help, we can’t put ourselves in that kind of risk,” Lingaitis said.
To give you an idea of the dangers they face, two weeks ago, a Russian missile attack on a train station in Western Ukraine killed dozens of people, A team of volunteers arrived at that station just 30 minutes after the attack.