Update: A rescue team made up of U.S. Army veterans have been tasked with rescuing premature twins Lenny and Moishe and bringing them safely to Poland, where they will reunite with their father, Alex Spektor. The twins will travel approximately 11 hours before arriving at a local hospital.
“They will be put into the NICU immediately,” Spektor tells NPR. “We don’t want to slow down that process.”
The twins were too small to move in the days after they were born amid the Russian invasion. Spektor, who was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and his partner, Irma Nuñez, now reside in Chicago. They chose a Ukrainian surrogate to carry their twins, and have been avidly watching the news and waiting for information about their babies from sources on the ground in Ukraine.
Bryan Stern, who is heading up the rescue team, is part of a nonprofit specialist extraction team made up of U.S. Army and Navy veterans. The team, called Project Dynamo, enters war zones to rescue those trying to escape. The mission for rescuing little Lenny and Moishe is aptly called “Operation Gemini.”
The rescue team also includes two doctors, two neonatal specialists, a nurse and a Ukrainian ambulance crew.
“We picked up baby Lenny and baby Moishe,” Stern told NPR as of Tuesday afternoon.
