kyiv, Ukraine – It's been a long night. In addition to the concussions they deal with daily, several soldiers arrived with serious injuries caused by missiles. “We had to transport them from the stabilization point to the nearest military hospital,” explains Olga, an anesthesiologist, while she makes herself a coffee. She has just returned to the house where she rests together with Anastasia, the clinical nurse with whom she teams.
“Everything is made more difficult by the weather conditions and the situation of the road, because it was frozen. The journey, which normally lasts 30 minutes, took us twice as long, because we have to drive very, very carefully and very slowly,” explains Olga, who left Ukraine almost two decades ago to study and work in various places in Europe. She was recently living in Austria, where she worked in a hospital.
But like many doctors, especially women, who volunteer in missions PMDSHa civil organization that supports the military in the evacuation of wounded from the battle front, has decided to take a break from his life to help those who defend Ukraine.
“I feel better being here, at least I see reality in front of me,” says this woman who is on her third rotation since the beginning of the war.
“Here I have much, much more sympathy for these people and, even though time passes, I can't get used to this. I start crying at any moment. At my job in Austria I don't cry. “It's just a normal job,” says Olga, who is very upset when someone in Europe says they are neutral. “How can we be neutral about what we see?”
Encourage fighters despite the risk of death
Anastasia nods, the same thing happens to her. She has a job in kyiv and a young daughter waiting for her, but she needs to help. “The beautiful thing is that when the soldiers know that we work here as volunteers, they thank us enormously for leaving the comfort of our homes and coming here to treat them. Doing this voluntarily increases the value for them,” explains Anastasia, who assures that her heart breaks daily.
Many of the wounded he treats are young, some younger than his own daughter. She tries to shake their hand, to tell them that everything is going to be okay.. “If I have an extra pair of socks, for example, I give them to him. I try to boost their morale and can only bow my head to thank them for coming to the battle line. “Let them protect us all,” says Anastasia, adding that it hurts her to know that thousands of young people could not follow a normal life, like anyone else in the world, but rather risk their lives every second to protect the rest of their compatriots.
Each of the doctors and nurses who are part of the team are full of stories that have made them cry. This gives them more courage to face daily challenges.
Read alsoWomen, the other side of the war in Ukraine
They know that they can die during evacuations, that the Russian kamikaze drones that constantly fly over the fronts make their work even more dangerous, they are aware of the abuses that await them as female medical personnel if they are captured as prisoners of war, they know that they will never return to be the same people. The images that are not erased from their memory and the pain will accompany them forever.
“My first fear, when the war started, what scared me the most was captivity. I was thinking about it. Now it has gone into the background. Now I'm more afraid of losing someone on my team. Of future victims,” explains Svitlana Druzenko, director of the medical department of the First Pirogov Volunteer Mobile Hospital, a group of civilian health professionals dedicated to providing medical care on the front lines.
More than 500 health workers are missing or imprisoned in Russian prisons.
Лікар-доброволець Наталя (Кориця): «Привезли військового з турнікетами на трьох кінцівках. You are divided and і розумієш: їх доведеться мпутувати»https://t.co/YyXRAHSeDo
— ПДМШ PFVMH (@PFVMH_) July 26, 2023
Svitlana is in charge of scheduling shifts, assembling equipment, and ensuring that all volunteers have what they need to do their work.
Her story is no different than many other women on the team. In 2014 after the Revolution of Dignity, but especially after the invasion of pro-Russian separatists launched in the Donbass, he decided that he had to help. She joined this organization that evacuates the wounded, left behind her job as an editor and translator and studied medicine.
He was working in a hospital when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. He has since returned to his mission with ambulances.
“The war has changed my life completely, absolutely. I think it has changed the lives of many people. I think it has made us more persistent,” she confesses.
Life is not easy, they all live in a house where they have attached stretchers as bedrooms. Men in one sector, women in another. They have even set up a tent in the living room. But even so they know that they live in a palace compared to the conditions of the soldiers in the trenches, where they have to endure thousands of additional problems to the constant siege of the Russian forces.
“I will be able to say that I helped on the front line”
Even under these harsh circumstances, Dasha feels happy. She prefers to be here where she arrived, despite the opposition of her mother, who even fell ill. “Here I do what I always wanted to do,” she says. When she was a teenager in 2014, still in school, she witnessed the war in the Donbass and how thousands of young Ukrainians left their lives behind, put on the uniform and went to the front without having any experience. From then on she wanted to help and from then on she knew that the best way to do it was to study medicine. She is currently a surgeon.
“If after many years one of my children, or someone else, asks me what I did for my country, I will be able to say that I helped on the front lines,” says Dasha, whose eyes often water.
He says that the first injured person he treated was a young man who had lost both hands with a grenade that exploded. “I always talk to them to keep them awake and know that they are okay, I talk to them about the family that is waiting for them, about the victory that will come. I have learned that for them the main concern is the family, they know that they are well, but not their fellow fighters. Those who were left fighting,” says Dasha, who is sure that this war has already traumatized them all and is going to be worse.
But she feels better providing support on the front. And she knows that those fighting on the front are grateful. Whenever they can express their gratitude, they do so.
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