Lakebay Animal Rescuer Returns to Ukraine for Ninth Mission

It was still mid-winter in Ukraine when Tom Bates slipped into the frontline city of Orokhiv after dark to avoid Russian drones. The headlights of his van were off, and his drone detector was on. He was with a Romanian animal rescuer named Petya Petrova.

“I’ve known her since the beginning of the war,” Bates said. “We had to navigate our way to this guy’s place in the dark, and then we had to get out of there before daylight.”

They found the rendezvous and a man waiting for them, with a pregnant cow they were to evacuate.

“The guy got the cow, her name was Aletha, into the van, and we got her to her destination before the end of the next day,” Bates said. “You can’t keep a cow in a car for too long. I’ll never forget the mess. I mean, oh my God.”

Bates is a 72-year-old retired trucker running a supply train into a war zone while supporting a fugitive stealing animals from corrupt breeders, volunteers walking into blast zones, and a cat named Garfield strutting around with a bullet in his abdomen (see sidebar).

He returned home on April 16 after five months of volunteering to feed, help, or evacuate abandoned animals and their owners across Ukraine. It was his eighth trip to Ukraine since Russia invaded Feb. 24, 2022. He has spent about 880 days there since then.

“What happens so often is people will not evacuate unless their animals get evacuated ahead of them. It’s their family; that’s all it is. And that brought a cow into my van,” he said.

Bates had never been to Europe before landing in Przemyśl, Poland, March 23, 2022, without a plan or connections, to do what he could to help. He began volunteering for local animal rescue efforts, organizing warehouses, and driving trucks to Ukraine to deliver supplies. On his return trips, he rescued dogs, cats, raptors, owls, and farm animals, and sometimes their owners.

He volunteered with the United Kingdom-based nonprofit K9 Rescue International, then co-founded an offshoot, K9 Rescue Ukraine, in 2023, based in Poltava and managed by a single employee who earns $100 a month. He recently expanded the organization to the U.S., where it received a 509(a)(2) designation by the IRS to facilitate tax-deductible donations.

“We’re still one of the few organizations that are operating the way we do in Ukraine. We have managed to eliminate most of the bad players. They do it themselves through ineptitude, not telling the truth, and stealing.”

As a result, Bates said, K9 Rescue Ukraine has grown enough to become a donor for the animal food and supplies it receives, rather than just distributing them itself.

“We have been lucky enough to get 45 tons of food since November, and we’re now able to donate to other organizations that are doing the good work, too. We’re spreading it around so that, even now while I’m home, we’re able to distribute.”

One of their colleagues is Alona, who cares for rescued horses. Bates evacuated her from Kramatorsk with her five Dobermans in 2023. She later got a job with a breeder who turned out to be running a puppy mill. She stole as many dogs as she could and fled, and is now wanted by the police.

“I only hang out with the best people,” Bates said.

“We’ve been fortunate to receive some pretty good funds, too,” he said. “And I love my van, but all it takes is one breakdown to suck it all away.”

The last four years have been hard on everyone, he said; his wife, Gretchen Roosevelt (see sidebar), his colleagues, the Ukrainian people.

“It’s the same thing, different year, different techniques, but bottom line is we’re feeding animals. We’re evacuating animals. You can’t save all of them. You have to get that. My philosophy is that if you save one, if you got one out today, you’ve done a good job,” Bates said.

“Some of the evacuations are getting so complicated; there are so many animals, and fuel is the same over there as it is here. We get a lot of requests, some from foreign organizations, to do rescues. We’re trying to train them to fund their requests,” he said.

The conflict remains a stalemate, according to the nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War. Russia occupies 20% of the eastern Donbas region while bombarding Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian populations. Ukraine has expanded its drone strikes into Russia and the Black Sea, targeting oil production, military assets, and transportation hubs. Russia had a net gain of 1,495 square miles in the last year. Ukraine reclaimed 193 square miles in the last two months.

Drone warfare has changed the nature of the conflict just in the last year, Bates said.

“It’s frightening because now you’re more exposed. People only really go out at night or when the weather is so bad the drones can’t fly. So, with evacuation, there aren’t too many people doing it, and when I’m in Ukraine, it’s ‘Tom, can you, Tom, will you, Tom, when will you?’ ”

One of the volunteers Bates works with is Tanya Izorkina.

“She’s in Dobropillya; it’s a frontline city, mostly abandoned, a lot of drone attacks; I just got to know her in the last few months,” he said. “She’s living there, taking care of people, animals, just an exuberant, great person to know — so I ended up working with her.”

On May 12, Izorkina and a friend were driving through the city on their way to evacuate some dogs when a drone struck their vehicle. “They were both injured but escaped and were able to call someone in a town 40 kilometers to the north because she has Starlink,” Bates said. “This person had to drive down and evacuate them to a hospital in Kramatorsk.” On May 17, Izorkina and some friends walked 25 kilometers back to Dobropillya, where she sent a message to Bates: “We have all arrived safely back in the hell zone.”

“She’s not supposed to be in Dobropillya; she was supposed to evacuate,” Bates said. “But she’s got animals there, and she’s just, like, a stubborn Ukrainian. And she is helping the pensioners in the town who haven’t got anywhere to go, and the people who are left won’t evacuate and abandon those animals.”

Bates returned to Ukraine for the ninth time June 30.

“This thing has taken on a life of its own,” he said. “I keep telling myself I’m going back to wrap things up so I can come home and manage it from here. But I get there, and I realize I make a difference. I do this differently and help people out along the way. Not many people get that opportunity. I don’t see an end to that.

“To be honest, I want to be there till the end of the war; I want to be in Independence Square in Kyiv when Ukraine wins,” he said. “Yeah, when they win.”

UPDATE: Tanya Izorkina successfully evacuated from Dobropillya with her animals at the end of June.