Breaking: Detroit Man Captured by Russians and Accused of Spying Rescued in Daring Civilian Mission
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Kirillo Alexandrov was in the shower when the Russians came for him.
They dragged him out of his home in southeast Ukraine naked and in handcuffs and beat him. He was an American spy, they said. He said they hauled him off to a cell where they interrogated him. Then they brought him outside and told him they were going to execute him.
A Russian soldier put a gun to his head. He pulled the trigger.
"The bullet didn't go through my head," Alexandrov said. "It went past my ear."
Arrested in early April, Alexandrov remained in Russian captivity for more than a month, feeling helpless, and thinking he could be killed at any time, he said. This week, Alexandrov was rescued from Russian captivity and reunited with his wife in a daring operation by Project Dynamo. The Tampa, Fla.-based civilian rescue group formed last summer to help evacuate Americans and American allies from Afghanistan, and has since turned its attention to Ukraine.
National Review has profiled the group's rescue efforts over the past nine months.
Over the last few months, volunteers with the donor-funded nonprofit have rescued hundreds of people from Ukraine, including premature babies and a retired American paratrooper. This is the first Russian prisoner they've rescued, Dynamo founder Bryan Stern told National Review.
"It was really, really, really hard," Stern said of the operation. "I have no leverage, not really. If it's a ransom, they're going to want millions. We don't have it. If it's a prisoner exchange, that's cool, but I don' have any Russian prisoners to exchange, so that doesn't work."
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State acknowledged in an email that they are aware of reports of the rescue, but declined to comment "due to privacy considerations."
Alexandrov, 27, who is from the Detroit area, said he ended up living in Kherson, Ukraine, near the border with Crimea, after he married his Ukrainian wife. He's been living there off and on since 2018, he said, and received residency status about a year ago.
"We had had a good life there, small farm, quiet village, and we lived basically the way we wanted to," said Alexandrov. He said he earned a living online selling Ukrainian jewelry, religious items, and iconography to Americans.
Like many people living in Ukraine last winter, Alexandrov thought the threats of a Russian invasion were overblown, a bluff by Russian President Vladimir Putin. When the Russian army did invade, his mind was eased by news reports that showed the Ukrainians doing well, and the Russians struggling with bad logistics, failing equipment, and falling morale. But, for the safety of his family, he reached out to Project Dynamo and applied for assistance evacuating, he said.
"I wanted to leave as soon as I could and get my family out," he said.
Alexadrov said the Russian soldiers came for him in the first week of April.
"They had showed up to my house, dragged me out of the shower in front of my family, in front of neighbors, and beat me while I was cuffed," he said. "Eventually let me put clothes on. Took me to a cell, interrogated me. They got violent with my wife. Just real animalistic behavior."
Back in Michigan, Alexandrov's mom, Gloria Bernardon, had been worried about her son's safety for weeks, she said. On the day her son was taken by the Russians, she was awoken around 5 a.m. by a phone call from a friend in Ukraine with the news.
"I'm pretty sure I screamed when I heard that," she said.
Bernardon said some FBI agents came to her home a few days later. She said she inferred from them that Project Dynamo was her best hope for rescuing her son. She was aware of Project Dynamo from TV, and had been in communication with volunteers with the group.
Stern said that his team had been aware of Alexandrov and his wife, and had been planning an exfiltration operation before he was arrested. "And then we lost communication with him, and that's how we figured out he was arrested," Stern said.
Stern said they explored two avenues to rescue Alexandrov: a negotiated release, working through Russian contacts, and a unilateral rescue operation. "We thought of every possible idea, from hot air balloons to doing a GoFundMe page to raise money, and everything in the middle," he said.
Stern, an international security consultant who is a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Navy, said that through his work, and through his donors and supporters, Project Dynamo has established an extensive global network of people who "help us get in touch with the people that we need to get in touch with to have the discussions that need to be had." For more than three weeks, his team was in regular communication with Russian contacts, he said.
"My assessment is they knew they didn't have a real spy. Mostly because Kirillo is not a real spy," Stern said. But he is an American, and they could accuse him of being a spy, parade him on television, and use him for propaganda. "It's a problem," Stern said. "Most spies that are arrested for espionage usually say, 'I'm not a spy,' right."
Stern said that through Project Dynamo's contacts, they learned that the Russians were arranging to fly Alexandrov into Russia to face criminal charges for spying and espionage, and that he likely faced decades in prison.
Stern said that while his team was negotiating with the Russians, they also were developing sources in the Kherson area who gathered intelligence and provided situational awareness.
"We needed to understand every little thing," Stern said. "We weren't even sure at the time who had him, because there are multiple factions of Russian forces that are operating. It's not just the Russian army. There are all kinds of groups and sub-groups that exist."
The rescue mission was dubbed "Detroit Lions," and Alexandrov was referred to as "Lion 1." Stern declined to detail several aspects of the operation, which they initiated on Monday, but he said they used their network of sources to get Alexandrov out of Russian captivity – imagine "a jail break without a jail break," he said. They then moved Alexandrov, his wife, and his mother-in-law on the ground, using a pre-planned route. They had to pass through more than 20 Russian checkpoints along the way, according to Project Dynamo. Stern declined to say exactly how they moved an accused spy, with no passport, who was supposed to be in Russian custody through the checkpoints. "Very carefully," he said.
"The people that were moving him were actually unwitting as to who he was and how valuable he was, by design," Stern said. "I didn't want our people to know too much to protect themselves from themselves, meaning, the guy driving the car did not understand that he had a charged spy in the back."
Stern, backed by Ukrainians with machine guns – "lots of them" – took positive control over Alexandrov and his family at a predetermined handoff location, a heavily-wooded side road. A video of the rescue shows Stern, accompanied by two armed men, approaching a car on the side road, and hugging Alexandrov, his wife, and his mother-in-law. "We're not out of here until we're out of here," he told them after they got into Stern's vehicle.
They then headed west, to Poland, "as fast as we possibly could," Stern said.
Alexandrov said he felt anxious the whole trip, like "there was a gun in the back of my head."
In Poland, he was reunited with his mom and his stepfather.
"We all owe his life to Project Dynamo," Bernardon said. "He would not be here today, we probably would have never seen him again if it was not for the efforts of Bryan and company."
Alexandrov agreed that he owes his life to the volunteers with Project Dynamo.
"They are simply the most honorable, bravest, best people I've ever met in my entire life," he said. "The world needs to know who they are."
Stern said his sources have told him that the Russians intend to convict Alexandrov in absentia, and that he is technically an at-large criminal in their eyes.
"I don't see a tourist trip to Moscow anytime soon," he said.
Stern said they're now trying to work through the State Department bureaucracy to get Alexandrov's wife an expedited visa, and also to get help for his mother-in-law.
"We're trying to get this family as far away from Russia as we possibly, possibly, possibly can," he said.
Editor's Note: The U.S. Department of State says it is working to ensure that U.S. embassies and consulates in Eastern Europe have sufficient staff and resources. They are prioritizing consular support for U.S. citizens living in Ukraine who have families often with mixed immigration status. The U.S. Consulate General in Frankfort, Germany has been designated as the processing post for all immigrant visa applications from Ukraine.
U.S. citizens who are overseas with immediate family members who haven't filed an immigrant visa petition with U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services may request to file a petition at the nearest embassy or consulate that processes immigrant visas. Individuals with approved, current petitions who have not been scheduled for an immigrant visa interview may be able to request expedited processing through the National Visa Center.
For more information, visit: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/information-for-nationals-of-Ukraine.html
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