Providing Wheeled Support for Ukraine’s First Responders

The convoy of 12 emergency vehicles donated by communities across the United States rolled into Kyiv on May 24.

"This was my eighth trip to Ukraine," said Chris Manson, founder of U.S. Ambulances for Ukraine, an Illinois-based NGO that supplied more than 100 ambulances, fire trucks, and auxiliary vehicles to Ukraine's emergency services and other first responders since 2022.

"While I have had to go into shelters before because of air raids, this was the first time I could hear anti-aircraft fire, hear the drones clearly, see the search lights, and see, hear, and feel the explosions when the drones were hit or they crashed into the ground."

As Manson and his team watched the attack unfold, he realized that the vehicles they had previously sent with support from Direct Relief would likely be working that night in Kyiv and elsewhere in the country.

"It felt good knowing that the vehicles we had delivered to Ukraine from the U.S. would help address some of the suffering caused by the attack. And that reinforced that what we were doing was right, and worthwhile," Manson, a former firefighter, said by phone on his way back home via Warsaw.

While the supply of medicines and medical products remains the focus of Direct Relief's support for Ukraine, another concern is ensuring that emergency care is provided where it is needed - and fast.

Direct Relief has so far donated five new ambulances to support healthcare in Ukraine, with the vehicles going to work in hospitals in Lviv and other locations. By supporting grass-roots initiatives like Manson's, points of need are often identified, and damage to first responder capacities across the country can be repaired.

By May 2025, Ukrainian authorities had reported that more than 400 of the country's medical ambulances had been destroyed, damaged, or seized during the war.

Since 2023, Direct Relief has supported Manson's NGO in shipping almost half of the 104 vehicles donated to Ukraine by hospitals, police departments, fire brigades, and other groups across the United States. They were transferred to local emergency services and NGOs to begin what is regarded as their "next life" after years of service in the United States.

While ambulances are the main vehicle type donated, the 11 fire trucks sent also helped save many people's lives, Manson emphasized.

"These American fire engines have played a pivotal role in some of the hardest hit areas of Ukraine, including in Odesa and Kharkiv," he said. "It's a great feeling knowing our retired fire engines from the U.S. are saving lives halfway around the world."

"With the help of this fire truck [pictured at the top of this story], we extinguished 824 fires in 2024, most of which started after missile bombardments and drone attacks," said Serhii Perov, the head of Odesa's volunteer firefighting unit, which supports the state emergency services and has its own geographical area of responsibility.

His unit received seven donated vehicles from the U.S. since 2022, helping to alleviate the situation in one of Ukraine's hardest-hit cities. In September, his unit will open a second fire station equipped with vehicles exclusively donated from the United States.

Vehicles are accepted only in good working condition, but might have varying amounts of mileage, from 20,000 to more than 400,000 miles. Each has its own story before and after donation.

An ambulance Perov's unit received a year ago from Valparaiso, Indiana, has been instrumental in saving many lives. As well as helping victims of military action, it rushed an eight-month-old baby girl to the hospital just in time for heart surgeons to save her life, the firefighter told Direct Relief.

"It did amazing work in the United States and now continues to work in Odesa," said Perov, whose team of around 40 volunteers had just used the donated equipment to extinguish seven fires on two successive nights of drone and missile strikes.

The entire undertaking grew from one simple question: "Dad, how can we help?" asked Manson's 7-year-old daughter, Lily, as they watched TV news footage of Ukrainian families being separated at railway stations at the start of the war.

Help Across the Globe

More than 10,500 miles away from Ukraine, when the news of the invasion broke, New Zealander Tenby Powell was contemplating his next life steps during a trip into the wilds after undergoing cancer surgery.

"It was never the intention to have the biggest New Zealand-flagged humanitarian organization. It was to just get stuck in and do what I could," said Powell, a successful businessman with years of military service under his belt.

Nonetheless, that's what grew from this impulse to help: Powell returned from the bush, set off for Ukraine, and founded Kiwi Aid & Refugee Evacuation, or Kiwi K.A.R.E. Fast-forward to 2025, and the organization has not only sent 45 ambulances to Ukraine (mainly donated in New Zealand and Australia) but is running programs in other areas of need.

Its Road-of-Life program has so far evacuated more than 3,000 civilians from frontline areas, some into Poland and Germany, and conducts short and long-haul patient transfers to and from hospitals using some of the donated vehicles.

Add to that the distribution of hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies and the fabrication of some 4,500 wood-burning stoves and water boilers, recycled from old electrical water cylinders, and this Kiwi NGO has built a broad humanitarian aid platform uniting donors and partners in Ukraine and globally.

"We've had the most extraordinary support from within New Zealand, and with the incredible support from Direct Relief, we've been able to move mountains," said Powell, who now spends about half of each year in Ukraine due to the great travelling distance to and from his homeland.

"We have plans to augment Road-of-Life as an outreach program, offering regular mobile health clinics in areas where civilians haven't seen a health professional for years," said Powell.

Following Ukraine's major counteroffensive in 2022, Kiwi K.A.R.E gained access to newly liberated areas and held pop-up health clinics. The Ukrainian doctor and Canadian nurse who accompanied the NGO on their first trip were immediately overwhelmed with the need.

"We were completely unprepared for what confronted us," Powell recalled. "The queue of mostly the elderly and children seeking medical help stretched 200 meters within minutes. Their [conditions] ranged from chronic chest infections, unset fractures, and significant toothache, to cancer patients needing access to medication and transportation to the hospital. Road-of-Life was incepted almost immediately, and the ambulances have not stopped rolling."