Why a Ukrainian zoologist risked his life to save 1,000 bats from a bat collider

A Ukrainian zoologist and his team risked their lives to rescue hundreds of bats from what’s called a bat collider in Kharkiv, after Russia invaded the country last year.

“Kharkiv is very close to [the] Russian border and, exactly from the window of our office, we saw the smoke of burning Russian tanks in the northern margin of the city,” said Anton Vlashenko, director of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Centre.

“We had shellings, also we had machine gun fire … [but] it was our responsibility to first save these creatures,” he told The Current’s Matt Galloway.

The bat collider is an almost 20-metre-long circular tunnel, which can hold up to 3,000 bats flying around freely. It was built in a forested area near Feldman Ecopark, a zoo in Kharviv. It hosts bats during their winter hibernation, and conservationists used it to help injured or newborn bats learn to fly.

WATCH | Inside the ‘bat collider’ in Kharkiv: 

A large number of bats had been moved there just before the war started on Feb. 24 last year. When Russia invaded, Vlashenko and his team were unable to replenish food and water at the collider, due to the proximity of the violence. (Zoo officials claimed last April that two employees, who stayed to feed the animals, were shot dead by Russian soldiers in the early weeks of the war).

Despite the challenges, Vlashenko refused to leave the animals to die. He and his team reached the collider in late March, and were able to rescue 1,000 bats in what he described as “a very, very stressful day.”

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, suffered months of shelling before Russian forces were pushed back out of artillery range at the end of last summer. When Vlashenko spoke to The Current, he said things were relatively peaceful, with consistent electricity and no rocket attacks for a few days. 

He sees his work as being about “more than just the bats.”

“It’s our contribution to general resistance,” he said. He sees other Ukrainians also trying to continue with their lives and professions, as close to normal as they can get.

“We [are] all together keeping our country alive.”

The secret life of bats

Vlashenko has been working with bats for 20 years, first becoming interested in university.

“For me, it was some kind of challenge to go to [the] forest to find their roost and to understand how they live,” he said.

Those encounters help to unravel the mystery of a bat, who could be a “20, 30 year-old creature with a lot of knowledge in their little, little brain,” he said.

Before the war, his organization rescued bats and helped them to survive Kharkiv’s harsh winters. They captured up to 3,000 bats each year, placing them in special refrigerators to induce hibernation. The bats are monitored over winter, and fed if needed, before being released in spring.

The war has made that work more difficult, with rolling power cuts in much of Ukraine. Bats are also flying through broken windows into damaged buildings, but becoming trapped and unable to find their way back out.

“They simply die because of starvation,” Vlashenko said.

His team of conservationists have been going from building to building to rescue these bats, and put them safely in hibernation devices. As the war drags on and winter sets in, they’ve resorted to caring for some of the bats in their own homes, even placing them in cloth bags in their own refrigerators, to induce hibernation. 

Biological weapons allegation

Last March, the conservationists were accused of developing biological weapons by Russian military officials.

Russia alleged that Ukraine and the U.S. were conducting joint military biological research, involving samples of bat parasites.

“They mentioned that it was like 140 containers with bad parasites that would be spread somewhere in Russia, and attack Russian soldiers,” Vlashenko said.

In November, the UN Security Council rejected Russia’s attempt to establish a commission to investigate the claims, with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, describing the claims as a “disinformation campaign” to distract from the war.

Vlashenko said the accusations were a “fairy tale.” Those containers do exist, but they are samples of parasites stored in ethanol, and pose no risk to anyone, he said.

While in some respects he finds the accusations laughable, he also worries that if Russia did capture Kharkiv, he and his team might be subject to interrogation or even torture.

His mother has asked him if he might leave Kharkiv for his own safety, but he’s not willing to leave his work behind, calling the idea of fleeing “the greatest nightmare.”

“Just imagine that we simply leave and all these bats just die inside those refrigerators, without electricity,” he said.

“I couldn’t imagine. We have responsibility for these creatures.”