American couple’s surrogate twins saved in daring rescue from Ukraine

‘The war didn’t want to let them go. But we got them out’

An American couple’s two premature twins have been rescued from Ukraine by a Florida-based non profit organisation after being born via a surrogate.

The twins, Lenny and Moishe, were born prematurely to a Ukrainian surrogate in Kyiv last month and had been stuck in a hospital as Russian troops advanced across Ukraine.

Their Ukrainian-born father Alex Spektor immediately flew from his home in Chicago to Poland last week and eventually a rescue operation – dubbed ‘Operation Gemini’ – was launched to evacuate the twins.

Like many other Americans, Mr Spektor turned to Project Dynamo, a civilian rescue organisation co-founded by Bryan Stern, of Tampa, Florida, to help.

“We picked up baby Lenny and baby Moishe,” Mr Stern told NPR on Monday. “[The Russians] were shelling something else, but it was close enough that the ground was shaking,”

“I mean, the artillery doesn’t care what it is — it’s gonna land where it lands. The artillery doesn’t say like, ‘Oh, well, there’s babies here, so we’ll go somewhere else.’”

Mr Stern, whose organisation previously worked to rescue US civilians from Afghanistan, said he had to learn about how to care for premature babies before the 14 hour drive from Poland to Kyiv and back on Monday.

Members of ‘Operation Gemini’ who rescued two American-Ukrainian twins (Project Dynamo)

“I don’t know anything about premature babies,” he said in another interview with Fox13 News of his research. “I know how to clean a lot of guns and do a lot of other things. I’m an educated man, but I can’t speak intelligently about premature babies! Not even a little bit.”

The Project Dynamo founder said his his team of three vehicles had to pass through three Ukrainian checkpoints with an ambulance escort and that the twin’s surrogate mother was also with them.

The non-profit has now evacuated 150 people in 14 separate missions in Ukraine since 24 February.

“The war didn’t want to let them go. But we got them out,” Mr Spektor told after meeting his twins on Tuesday. “They’re just tiny but amazing. Because in the photographs they look so big. Oh, my God. Insane”.

On a GoFundMe page he added that “doctors say they are doing well; even the geneticist was impressed,” and that “There’s a ways to go before they can come home, and updates to come once we’ve had a chance to breathe.”

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here.  If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.