An injured Ukrainian soldier being transported from the front line. — © 2023 The New York Times Company
WHEN the war broke out, Dr Ihor Deineka swapped his white coat for military fatigues and settled into a sombre rhythm along the front line.
An anaesthesiologist from Rivne, Ukraine, he is among thousands of civilian doctors and medical personnel who have risked their lives to treat an endless stream of military casualties caused by Russia’s war.
“I lived a normal life, until I had to go and defend Ukraine from an invasion,” said Deineka, who has not seen his family for months.
Deineka and dozens of combat medics and support staff live in an austere field hospital 18km from the front line, working around the clock in dangerous conditions.Combat medics have treated about 13,000 soldiers at the hospital since it opened in October.
While the Ukrainian military has not disclosed how many of its soldiers have been killed or wounded since the Russian invasion began, the relentless flow of patients reflects the staggering cost of 16 months of war on Ukrainian troops.
Their wounds, from mangled limbs to punctured skulls, are the gruesome consequence of the array of heavy weapons deployed on the battlefield.
A soldier laying in the operating theatre while medics attend to him. — © 2023 The New York Times Company
“We’re working on two front lines,” said Oleksiy Nazarishin, a surgeon and the chief medical officer. “The war against the enemy and the war for the patient’s life.”
In the same forests where the fighting is taking place, first-aid medics perform triage amid artillery explosions, transporting bloodied soldiers in ambulances to the field hospital.
Deineka and his colleagues shuttle them on stretchers into crowded operating rooms where medics seal and wrap their gaping wounds. In the worst cases, a single soldier with multiple severe injuries is treated by half a dozen doctors at the same time.
Speaking from his hospital bed, Anatoliy, a Ukrainian soldier severely wounded by shelling, described the devastation he has witnessed.
“I thought you could only see things like this in films about World War II,” he said. Per military protocol, he is identified only by his first name.
The severity and frequency of the casualties are the result of a long, protracted battle for control that has reached a bloody stalemate, with no end in sight.
For the medics, it’s a gruelling cycle of trauma, death and exhaustion.
At times, they are forced to confront their fears and frustrations head on in the operating room.
A Russian PoW being treated at the Ukrainian military field hospital. — © 2023 The New York Times Company
On a quiet morning, a captured Russian soldier arrived at the hospital with injuries to his shoulders. While his arrival provoked an emotional response from the medics, they nonetheless upheld their medical oath to treat him, on the same bed as some of the wounded Ukrainian soldiers he’d been fighting.
News of his presence reverberated to the hallway, where some of the medics stopped to gawk at the enemy in a wheelchair. Others yelled profanities at him. The prisoner of war (PoW) was quickly whisked away by Ukrainian special forces and taken into custody.
“When I see this PoW, I imagine him holding an assault rifle in his hands and shooting at our soldier,” said Yuliya Kasian, a surgeon volunteering at the field hospital. “I just don’t have respect or compassion for him in my soul.”
But there wasn’t time to linger on an enemy patient. Soon more soldiers arrived from the battlefield, with new wounds to treat. One day, perhaps, there will be time to reflect on the toll of it all.
“It gets more and more difficult psychologically with every day of war,” Deineka said. “Because fatigue grows on you.”
“We’re coping now, and I hope we’ll have enough strength to last us until the end.” — © 2023 The New York Times
