A lion and a wolf have been evacuated from a zoo in Ukraine following a four-day rescue mission.
Simba the lion and the wolf named Akyla were completely awake during their journey due to the lack of tranquillisers available in war-torn Ukraine.
The pair were delivered to their new home in Radauti in Romania this week after travelling from a zoo in Zaporizhzhia in south-east Ukraine.
The lion and wolf were the last two animals to be evacuated from the small private zoo, Animals Australia's Louise Bonomi told the ABC.
Escaping the war zone involved crossing the towering Carpathian Mountains, which arch across the countries' common border.
Zaporizhzhia and its nearby nuclear power plant were the scene of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian invaders earlier this month.
The animal rights group involved in the operation said the mission was "full of dangers", further hampered by border entry bureaucracy.
"It's difficult to get people out of Ukraine if they're in very dangerous areas, but to bring out a lion and a wolf … was mission impossible. I was fifty-fifty on whether those animals and those people would make it out alive," the EU director at Animals International, Gabriel Paun, said.
"It was a team of people acting in good faith to do everything they could to rescue those animals."
The evacuation was made possible due to several animal rights groups and private citizens, including two men from the UK, Tim Locks and Jonathan Weaving.
The pair volunteered to enter Ukraine to rescue the animals and drive them to safety.
Animals International's Sebastian Taralunga said that despite the war, he had seen "incredible cooperation between organisations."
"Everybody agreed that in extreme times we have to have extreme measures and we decided to do whatever possible to bring those animals out of war," he said.
The two animals are recovering from the journey in their new enclosure until they are relocated to sanctuaries.
AP/ABC
