DODGING bullets and grenades, escaping blown up cars and sleeping in an icy ditch, brave Brit Chris Parry put his life on the line to evacuate people from the frontline in Ukraine.
Despite having no military training, the 28-year-old running coach helped rescue over 400 civilians – many of whom were children, the elderly or infirm – from areas where the Russians were advancing.
BBCChris Parry ‘ran the gauntlet’ to rescue Ukrainians from the frontline[/caption]
BBCDad Rob and mum Christine, pictured with Chris and sister Katy[/caption]
go fund meChris helped children and elderly flee to safety[/caption]
Incredibly, despite filming his heroic missions, Chris, from Truro, Cornwall, didn’t tell his parents that he was going to the war-torn country.
His job was so dangerous, evacuators like him were known as “hell jumpers” – but his parents were oblivious to the danger he was in.
His dad Rob says: “The first we heard about him out there was when he called us to say, ‘Oh I’m out in Poland. Dad, don’t worry, I’m not going to go into Ukraine. I’m going to stay and help out in any way I possibly can in Poland.’”
Chris’ mum Christine adds: “We should have realised actually, this is Chris doing something which is dull – that’s not Chris, is it?”
Tragically, Chris’ life was cut short in January last year, when he was shot in the head and chest while trying to rescue an elderly woman from Soledar, in eastern Ukraine.
Now a new BBC2 documentary, Hell Jumper, tells the story of the final days of his life, through the bodycam footage he recorded, photos, voice notes and interviews.
In one heart-stopping scene Chris, who arrived shortly after the Russians invaded in February 2022, runs from door to door in a post-apocalyptic neighbourhood as he searches for a Ukrainian woman awaiting rescue, with bombs going off around him.
Other footage shows Chris, dubbed the “Smiling English boy” by locals, stretchering people down stairwells with one grateful elderly woman calling him “my little bunny”.
The film, which airs on Wednesday, also reveals how young Chris fell in love with a Ukrainian woman and the couple made plans to start a family before he was killed.
Love and war
Chris had been living in Cheltenham before the war but he had returned to the family home after a minor operation in 2022 to recuperate.
Mum Christine says in the film he became “very interested in the news”, particularly the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Eight days after war broke out, Chris flew to Warsaw in Poland where he hitched a ride with an American businessman called Brandon, who was delivering humanitarian supplies to Ukraine.
Brandon recalls in the film: “We waltzed up to the border like it was nothing. There was no wait and everybody was going this way and we were going this and we were like, ‘are we crazy here going into a warzone while everyone’s trying to leave?’”
It was here in Lviv that he met local Olya Volodymyrivna Khomenko, who worked for Brandon.
Speaking in the documentary, she admits she thought Chris was a “crazy person” for coming to the warzone.
For Chris, there was an instant attraction, with Olya saying: “He told me he noticed me right away, even in that humanitarian centre. I was looking horrible. It was so cold, I was wearing so many clothes to keep me warm…no makeup. “
She recalls how he tried to kiss her before he travelled east to the frontline, with him also asking her to teach him Ukrainian.
Olya says: “Chris told me that he hadn’t told his parents where he was. He didn’t even tell his friends. He made me take a picture of the contacts of his family and asked me if he’s not coming back to get in touch with them and tell them where he was and my time with him.”
BBCChris and Olya on a trip to Switzerland[/caption]
BBCChris had no military training[/caption]
BBCChris told his parents he was only helping deliver aid[/caption]
Grenade attack
Speaking about their rescue missions, fellow volunteer evacuator Christian, a personal trainer from the US, says in the film: “In the early weeks we were bringing out hundreds of people. Usually people with kids leave first, that’s as the front line is encroaching that city.
“But over time the people who did need to leave stayed too long. The poor, old and stubborn.
“You know, Russians right around the corner and that’s when they want to leave. So by the time Chris was doing the evacs, it’s risky.”
In one terrifying clip, Chris and his evacuation partner, Canadian carpenter Daniel, are forced to run for cover in the frontline city of Vuhledar when they spot a Russian drone before it drops a grenade.
Daniel shouts to Chris: “Drone! Move, move, move! Go!”
Hiding in an abandoned building, a breathless Chris says: “So we just had to run across an open area, like 400 metres from Russia’s open plain.
“We can see them, they can see us, sort of situation.”
Artillery fire explodes all around them as they hammer on the door of the woman they have been sent to rescue.
An interpreter explains she should only take what she needs. Surveying the dozen bags she has, Chris laughs and says: “She’s got a lot of stuff.”
And he adds: “This is insane.”
The elderly woman begins to cry as they discard items and Chris comforts her as they walk to his car. He tells her: “I know, it’s going to be ok.”
Olya recalls how Chris would return to stay with her. She says: “He was coming and going for about a month.
“We were never alone but it felt like he was following me around a bit. We lived in the same apartment with 15 people. He was always there. After a while I started enjoying it.”
She adds: “He was like a force of nature actually. He was flirting all this time.”
Olya says she tried to be “discrete” but “he said, ‘don’t be silly, they all know.’”
She says: “Being at war, being in danger, having this crisis all around you kind of brought us closer together and it was very emotional.
“He was going somewhere again and all of a sudden he said loved me and I just hugged him. I didn’t say it back.
“I didn’t really believe it but then he kept saying it for the next couple of days.”
Speaking about their blossoming romance, Olya says: “It was like an island of calmness and nice emotions when I was with him.”
She says they even talked about starting a family, with him drafting a list he called Chris and Olya’s perfect child, detailing the qualities their offspring would inherit from each of them.
Olya candidly admits: “I did have this fantasy, I couldn’t help myself. When you’re in love you just want to think there’s a future and we will be together and we might have kids. We’ll live in Ukraine but we’ll come to Cornwall often for vacations.”
BBCChris Parry with fellow evacuators Daniel Wilk and Yasya Golovko[/caption]
BBCHe and Yasya worked together in the warzone[/caption]
BBCOlya says they planned a family together[/caption]
‘Running the gauntlet’
In June 2022, Chris returned to the UK and confessed to his parents he had been in Ukraine.
His dad says: “I think he felt he had to come clean that he was in Ukraine, to a certain extent.”
Recalling his words to them, his mum says: “Nowhere near the frontline again, just distributing aid. I stay in my van, I don’t get involved in evacuating people.
“Bless him. You had to believe him. You wanted to believe he wasn’t in that danger.”
I did have this fantasy, I couldn’t help myself. When you’re in love you just want to think there’s a future and we will be together and we might have kids
Olya Khomenko
A week later, Chris returned to Ukraine. Rob says: “He was like a caged lion.”
As the war raged on, the work he was doing became more risky as the Russian Wagner group, a private army of 50,000 mercenaries and ex-prisoners, started killing and torturing its way across the frontline.
Olya says: “He started doing more risky things and going to places where no one is willing to go.”
She adds: “I would worry and he hated that I worried.”
Chris would go on solo missions, which heightened the danger, including to what is known as the grey zone.
Daniel explains: “It’s No Man’s Land. It’s where the war properly is. It’s not held by Ukraine or Russia. It fluctuates all the time.”
You had to believe him. You wanted to believe he wasn’t in that danger
Christine Parry
He adds: “The more time you spend in that area, the more likely you are to run into the Russians. But Chris, he’d go no matter what.”
On footage captured on his GoPro, Chris checks his map as he prepares for another evacuation and says: “Let’s f***ing run the gauntlet.”
Chris with one of the children he helped to rescue
BBCChris with a team of ‘hell jumpers’[/caption]
BBCRob and Christine wanted to believe he wasn’t in danger[/caption]
Hit by tank round
In another scene, on December 15, 2022, he sings along to the Iron Maiden track The Trooper as it blasts out from his car radio as he drives back late at night from Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, just 400 metres from the Russian front.
There’s a loud bump before he can be heard saying: “Oh my f***ing God.”
His 4×4 vehicle was hit by a Russian tank round, causing one of his tyres to explode. He also lost radio contact with his team.
The vehicle, which he was able to buy after fundraising via JustGiving, was written off and he was forced to sleep overnight in a trench in -2C conditions before being rescued the next day.
Olya recalls: “That was a horrible night for me. Just hell. I didn’t tell his parents. I was just waiting for some news, maybe that he’s going to come back online and he did.”
But his near death experience didn’t put him off and Olya says he started doing evacuations every day.
ReutersChris was not daunted by near misses[/caption]
BBCChris’s vehicle was written off by a tank attack[/caption]
BBCTeammate Andrew Bagshaw went missing with Chris[/caption]
Sick pics from Russion executioners
On January 5, last year, he called his parents for the last time. Speaking to The Sunday Times, his dad Rob said: “He was absolutely buzzing.
“He said, ‘Today I’ve had a great day – I rescued 11 people, two dogs, and a budgerigar.’”
The following day, Chris went missing while on a mission with another evacuator, Andrew Bagshaw, 48.
The Brit’s car was found abandoned, before his sister Katy was contacted by Russians on social media.
She told The Sunday Times: “They sent photos of dead bodies saying, ‘We’ve got your brother, he’s got what he deserved.’”
His death was confirmed two weeks later. Rob says: “We cried like babies.”
At an inquest in January, the coroner ruled his killing was unlawful.
He is believed to have been killed by the bloodthirsty Wagner Group.
In the heartbreaking documentary, dad Rob says Chris’s computer, containing his harrowing footage from Ukraine, means “the world, because it shows Chris.”
“I want to go through it but I feel I have to go through it, to be with Chris,” he says.
His family hope the film will help shine a light back on Ukraine. Christine says: “The world has to wake up and realise that Putin is a bully and if he’s not stopped, then it’s not going to affect just Ukraine.”
Rob adds: “But we will do whatever we can to keep Chris’s name alive and Ukraine in people’s minds.”
Hell Jumper is on BBC2 on Wednesday at 9pm
UK stands with Ukraine
By Harry Cole, The Sun’s Political Editor
PUTIN must be in no doubt “Britain under Labour” will still be “Ukraine’s firmest friend”, the new Defence Secretary declared earlier this month.
John Healey embraced hero President Volodymyr Zelensky in war torn Odessa as he vowed all additional military aid promised in April will be delivered within 100 days of Labour taking power “guaranteed”.
He insisted the new government is “totally committed” to hiking UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP but the “defence of Britain starts in Ukraine.”
He told The Sun: “At every stage since Putin launched his full scale invasion, we have backed all the military aid… the extra funding had our full backing in opposition, we will now deliver it in government.”
And in a direct message to the Russian tyrant, he warned: “Putin is looking for Western nations to lose patience to lose resolve, he must know that Britain under Labour will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes to win.
“We will confront Russian aggression and we will pursue him for his war crimes.”