While residents continue to flee from war-torn Ukraine one month after Russia launched a military invasion, a rescue team from around the world assembled to evacuate some wild cargo from the country.
A lion named Simba and a wolf named Akyla were evacuated from a zoo in southeast Ukraine following a four-day rescue mission that was "full of dangers."
"Everyone needs evacuating and there are plenty of teams looking after people. Strangely, no one else wanted to do this, so this is what we do," Tim Locks, one of the rescuers and a British war veteran, said on Facebook.
Locks said it took three hours to load both animals into the back of a Ford Transit minibus. The animals were put into cages, hoisted from their enclosures with a crane and loaded into the vehicle for their journey.
Pictures show Simba peering through the bars of his cage in the back of the van, and caretakers tending to Akyla, who appeared to be sedated for the initial transport.
Locks worked with several animal rights groups to transport Simba and Akyla from the zoo in Zaporizhzhia to a zoo in Radauti, in north-eastern Romania. But the journey was not without hardships, let alone the dangers of war.
The van could not secure permission by the authorities to cross through Romania's Siret border point, so they had no choice but to twice traverse the towering Carpathian Mountains — which arch across the countries' common border — from west to east adding nearly 620 miles to their journey, the Associated Press reported.
"It's difficult to get people out of Ukraine if they're in very dangerous areas, but to bring out a lion and a wolf... was mission impossible," Gabriel Paun, the EU director of animal rights group Animals International, told the AP. "I was fifty-fifty on whether those animals and those people would make it out alive."
A veterinarian was not available for the trip and neither were tranquilizers, so Simba and Akyla were "fully aware and awake" through their journey, Pain added.
At checkpoints, the group was met with skepticism when declaring their cargo.
"One guard told us there was a war on and it was no time to joke around,' Locks told Metro. "I took him to the side of the van, opened the door, and showed him this proper big lion, like Aslan out Narnia."
After making it to Romania, the animals received a police escort to their new temporary home. Simba and Akyla are said to be recovering from the journey and will eventually be relocated to sanctuaries.
"We've just heard back from the zoo in Romania and it's amazing to hear that both Simba and Akela are settling in well," Locks said on Facebook. "Both are eating and drinking plenty and enjoying some 'chill' time after the long journey."
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