The Ukraine evacuation of 2022 taught corporate security teams that speed, local presence, and adaptable planning are not optional; they are the difference between a successful extraction and a failed one. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, organisations had hours, not days, to make critical decisions about their people. The lessons that emerged from that crisis continue to reshape how multinationals approach corporate evacuation planning and duty of care obligations worldwide.
How quickly did corporate evacuations need to happen in Ukraine?
Corporate evacuations in Ukraine needed to happen within hours of the invasion beginning. Organisations that had pre-positioned plans and established provider relationships were able to move people within the first 24 to 48 hours. Those without existing frameworks found themselves scrambling for days, often with personnel still inside the country as conditions deteriorated rapidly.
The pace of the invasion compressed every standard planning timeline. Border crossings that were accessible on one day were overwhelmed or closed the next. Flight corridors shut down almost immediately. Road routes that appeared viable in the morning changed by the afternoon as military activity shifted. For corporate security teams, this meant that any crisis plan built around a 72-hour activation window was effectively useless from the moment the situation began.
Organisations that moved fastest shared common characteristics. They had already identified their personnel locations, they had relationships with ground-level providers, and they had clear internal authority structures so that decisions could be made without lengthy approval chains. The Ukraine evacuation demonstrated that crisis speed is not achieved during the crisis; it is built in the months and years before one begins.
What made the Ukraine evacuation different from previous crises?
The Ukraine evacuation in 2022 was distinct from previous crises because it combined the speed of a conventional military conflict with the complexity of a modern, economically integrated country. Unlike evacuations from more isolated conflict zones, Ukraine had large numbers of corporate employees, contractors, and business travellers embedded across major cities, many of whom had no prior hostile environment experience.
Previous large-scale evacuations, including operations during the Arab Spring across Libya and Egypt, typically involved more geographically concentrated populations or slower-moving political deterioration. Ukraine was different. The conflict began suddenly and escalated across multiple regions simultaneously. Kyiv, Kharkiv, and the eastern oblasts all became areas of concern within the same operational window, meaning providers could not simply focus resources on a single corridor.
The ground transport dimension also set Ukraine apart. With airspace closed almost immediately, every evacuation became a road-based operation. This meant crossing into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, or Romania, routes that quickly became congested with civilian traffic. Convoys needed to be planned around live border intelligence, fuel availability, and the capacity of crossing points that were never designed to handle that volume. For any provider operating in Ukraine, the absence of air options removed what is usually a primary tool in crisis evacuation response.
Why did many organisations struggle to locate their people in Ukraine?
Many organisations struggled to locate their people in Ukraine because they lacked real-time traveller tracking and had not maintained accurate records of who was in-country at the moment the invasion began. Personnel tracking is often treated as an administrative function rather than an operational one, and that gap became critically visible in February 2022.
The problem was not always a lack of technology. Some organisations had tracking systems in place but had not enforced consistent usage. Employees travelling for business had not logged itineraries. Contractors working on extended assignments were not captured in the same systems as direct employees. When security teams needed a definitive headcount, they were working from incomplete data at exactly the moment when accuracy was most critical.
There was also a communication challenge. As the situation escalated, normal communication channels became unreliable. Mobile networks in some areas were disrupted. Employees were moving independently, making their own decisions about where to shelter or which route to take. Without a pre-established communication protocol, including check-in procedures and designated contact points, organisations lost visibility of their people quickly.
The organisations that maintained clearest visibility during the Ukraine crisis were those using integrated tracking platforms that combined itinerary data, real-time location monitoring, and direct communication with travellers. This capability, built before any crisis begins, is what allows a security team to know within minutes where every person is and what they need.
What role did local assets play in successful evacuations?
Local assets were the single most important operational factor in successful Ukraine evacuations. Providers with established, trusted networks of drivers, logistics coordinators, and on-the-ground contacts were able to move people when those without local relationships could not. Local knowledge of border conditions, fuel points, safe routes, and crossing procedures was not something that could be sourced remotely or at short notice.
In the days following the invasion, border crossings into Poland saw queues extending for many hours. Local contacts who understood which crossings were moving faster, which routes avoided the worst congestion, and how to manage documentation at each point gave evacuating convoys a measurable advantage. This intelligence could not be replicated by a provider operating solely from a headquarters thousands of miles away.
The value of local assets extended beyond logistics. Drivers who spoke Ukrainian and Russian, who understood how to interact with checkpoint personnel, and who knew the terrain reduced friction at every stage of a movement. In a crisis environment, friction costs time, and time directly affects safety outcomes.
NGS teams continued operating in Ukraine on a near-weekly basis in the years following the invasion, moving staff from Poland into Kyiv by road and returning the same way. That sustained presence reflects a broader principle: local capability is not something that can be switched on when a crisis begins. It has to be maintained continuously so that it is ready when needed.
How should corporate security teams update their crisis plans after Ukraine?
Corporate security teams should update their crisis plans after Ukraine by stress-testing every assumption that the conflict exposed as unreliable. The key updates fall into three areas: personnel visibility, provider relationships, and evacuation route diversity. Any plan that depends on air access, stable communications, or a single extraction corridor needs to be rebuilt around the possibility that none of those will be available.
Build personnel tracking into operational policy, not just technology
Technology alone does not solve the tracking problem. Organisations need to enforce consistent itinerary registration, define clear check-in requirements for high-risk destinations, and ensure that contractors and third-party workers are captured in the same system as direct employees. The policy and the platform need to work together.
Establish provider relationships before a crisis begins
Ukraine demonstrated that sourcing a provider during an active crisis is extremely difficult. Capacity is consumed quickly, pricing becomes unpredictable, and vetting a new partner under pressure is not realistic. Corporate security teams should identify and contract with providers across their key operating regions in advance, with clear service level agreements that define response timelines and escalation procedures.
Crisis plans should also be reviewed for overland evacuation capability specifically. The Ukraine experience showed that road-based evacuations are not a fallback; in many scenarios, they are the primary option. Plans that have not been designed around ground movements, cross-border logistics, and extended convoy operations are incomplete.
Which duty-of-care gaps did the Ukraine crisis expose for multinationals?
The Ukraine crisis exposed three significant duty-of-care gaps for multinationals: inadequate pre-travel risk assessment processes, insufficient communication protocols for active crises, and a failure to extend duty-of-care obligations to non-employee personnel such as contractors, dependants, and locally engaged staff.
Many organisations had employees in Ukraine who had not received a formal pre-travel risk briefing calibrated to the deteriorating security environment in the months before the invasion. Warning signs were visible in late 2021 and early 2022, but the information did not consistently reach the individuals travelling into the country. This gap between available intelligence and individual traveller awareness represents a direct failure of duty-of-care processes aligned with standards such as ISO 31030.
The communication gap became acute when organisations needed to reach their people quickly and found that they had no reliable mechanism to do so. Emergency contact trees that relied on personal mobile numbers, email, or standard messaging apps were insufficient when networks were disrupted. Organisations without a dedicated crisis communication channel, one that employees knew to monitor and respond to, lost critical time in the early hours of the evacuation.
Perhaps the most significant structural gap was the narrow definition of who duty of care applied to. Some organisations evacuated their direct employees while leaving contractors, locally engaged staff, and family members without support. Beyond the immediate human consequences, this created reputational and legal exposure. The Ukraine crisis prompted many multinationals to formally extend their duty-of-care frameworks to cover a broader population, and to define in advance which categories of person fall within the scope of their emergency response obligations.
How NGS supports corporate evacuation planning and crisis response
NGS provides end-to-end support for organisations that need to move people out of high-risk environments quickly and safely. Drawing on verified operational experience across Ukraine, Libya, Egypt, and multiple other crisis environments, NGS delivers the planning depth and on-the-ground capability that corporate security teams need before, during, and after a crisis.
- 24/7 emergency response: NGS operates a global operations centre that coordinates evacuations, tracks personnel, and deploys mitigation strategies in real time across multiple simultaneous incidents.
- Local asset networks: With a presence across more than 190 countries and access to over 50,000 vetted providers, NGS can source ground transport, armoured vehicles, and local coordination at short notice.
- Integrated tracking technology: The Aurora Platform gives clients real-time visibility of traveller locations, country risk assessments, and live situational updates.
- Crisis evacuation planning: NGS works with corporate security teams to build and stress-test evacuation plans before a crisis begins, including overland route planning and cross-border logistics.
- ISO 31030-aligned travel risk management: All services are structured to support organisations in meeting their duty of care obligations across high-risk destinations.
If your organisation’s crisis evacuation plan has not been reviewed since 2022, now is the time to close those gaps. Contact the NGS team to discuss how your current framework holds up against the lessons Ukraine exposed.
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