US Phoning “Every American” Reachable Inside Ukraine As Private Evac Efforts Begin

The US State Department said on Friday that it’s been directly reaching out to every American inside Ukraine that it can possibly contact. This after the US Embassy in past weeks had issued dire alerts that they should make plans to leave – however, which angered Ukraine officials themselves on up to President Zelensky, given the government consistently said there’s no real threat of large-scale invastion.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed in fresh statements that the US has “been in touch from the State Department with every American we can reach.”

While laying out a “range of ways” that Washington plans to help stranded US nationals – of which there’s believed to be 20,000 to 30,000 there before the start of hostilities – Psaki stuck by prior administration statements that there will be no evacuation inside the country.

“We continue to have the capacity to… help them in a range of ways, even as we don’t have a diplomatic presence in Ukraine,” Psaki said. “We don’t have people in the country right now, obviously, but they are in neighboring countries.”

This includes Poland, where US military members were deployed earlier this month to set up border area logistics to help receive fleeing Americans. 

Psaki stressed in her Friday comments that the administration has been “warning for months now about the dire circumstances developing in Ukraine, and conveying very directly to American citizens they should leave.” 

Meanwhile there are reports that private US-based organizations are helping in evacuation efforts inside Ukraine, even as official US channels are not active inside.

“Americans in Ukraine are being evacuated out of the war-ravaged nation by a Florida-based nonprofit group as Russian forces target Kyiv, officials said,” The New York Post details of one example. “More than 30 Americans had been safely evacuated out of Ukraine’s capital as of early Friday by the Tampa-based Project Dynamo, a spokesman for the group confirmed to The Post.”