[M]odern life has a pacing problem. Middle age is uncomfortably crammed with career and caregiving responsibilities, while many older people find themselves with neither enough purpose, connection or income to live comfortably.

Corinne Purtill, NY Times, “As We Live Longer, How Should Life Change? There Is a Blueprint.”

In the first weeks after Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, a coalition of nations conducted a colossal, if often haphazard, airlift to extract tens of thousands Afghans suddenly in grave danger because of their work for foreign governments or Afghan security services. But without the U.S. security blanket — the last American C-17 cargo planes left at the end of August — few countries have been willing to hazard their planes and their people to continue evacuations, leaving thousands of at-risk Afghans with few options for escape.

Enter Ukraine, a small but battle-hardened nation after years of war with Russian-backed separatists. After Kabul fell, Ukraine’s giant Ilyushin military planes were among the first to arrive to help with the evacuation. At one point, a group of Ukrainian G.U.R. officers left the security of the airport and, firing their rifles into the air, cleared a path for a pair of buses transporting journalists to safety.

Michael Schwirtz, A Nervy Trip to Kabul: How Ukraine Negotiated With the Taliban and Rescued 96 Afghans, New York Times

I love this story, especially because all of this unfolded just a few months before the Russian invasion.

I strongly recommend reading the whole article if you have a New York Times subscription–given everything that was thrown at the Ukrainians, it’s amazing that this evacuation happened at all.