We must become like ants. While they destroy our anthill, we are rebuilding it

Nurse’s notes

My war began on the Maidan (the public square in Kyiv, where the Revolution of Dignity took place) in 2014. I remember that during the so-called truce on Hrushevskyi Street, I approached a line of law enforcement officers who were banging their shields against the ground, scaring away those trying to talk to them. They were really hostile. But I came close and asked them: “Are you afraid of me?”

Someone tittered. But it broke the ice between us, and we started talking. In Russian – because we were all Russian-speaking at that time. For some reason Putin was spoken of, namely that it was very profitable for him to divide Ukraine. We discussed that we all wanted to preserve our country, however not as Russia’s satellite. Colonels and lieutenant colonels from Crimea stood in the first row. And they tried their best to prove to me that when Russia advances, they will be the first to go to defend Ukraine. I wonder how it actually ended up.

...War has been a constant presence in our family all these years. Starting with the fact that my husband and I met in the hospital, where I came as a volunteer in 2014. So, we took turns going east: I went to the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone as a volunteer, and my husband went on business trips to the Joint Forces Operation as a medic organizing the evacuation of the wounded. And when the enemy invasion began on February 24, I never hesitated to go to my native military hospital.

...The battles took place near Kyiv. And for the first four months, all the doctors lived together in the hospital in barracks. In the reception department, in the corridor, they provided primary surgical aid and stabilized the wounded. Doctors slept exactly in the same places on benches and in sleeping bags.

When the roads from Kyiv to the West were clogged with cars with people fleeing the war, our city seemed deserted. It was overgrown with caponiers and pillboxes, the streets were bristling with Czech hedgehogs (static anti-tank obstacle defense)... Still, I was struck by the number of children of all ages who resided in the hospital. They were doctors’ children living with their parents, who could not leave the wounded, and consequently they had no time to take the children out of Kyiv.

On top of that, everyone took their pets to work. One department manager was walking his small dog when he was able to leave the operating room. A cat lived in the anesthesiologist’s chamber. In one department in the lobby there was a cage with guinea pigs. And in the waiting room, a rabbit ruled the roost.

... In the middle of the night, we woke up to the arrival of wounded to the hospital. Medics, getting out of their sleeping bags, provided help and resuscitated the injured, nurses washed the bloody floor. The uniforms of the wounded, who were brought from the battlefield, smelled of ashes, their hands were black from soot and weapon grease. We held on and worked automatically. It was some kind of a conveyor. We were hit by immense pain later when, facing the wall, we tried to fall asleep for a while.

...On one of these days, after a difficult night, more than 60 wounded from Chernihiv were brought to the hospital at the same time. The city doctors collected the seriously injured (importantly, the windows of the hospital had been broken for a week given that the temperature outside was minus seven degrees Celsius, they ran out of antibiotics and painkillers), and loaded them onto a bus. The seriously wounded ones were lying on the floor on stretchers, those less afflicted were sitting in the cabin while the driver was breaking out of the besieged city under fire.

Six gurneys were brought to the hall at once, there was no place to turn around, the gurneys were lined up, doctors were right there unrolling the blankets and examining the wounded. Among them was a young guy from territorial defense. He was wearing a hipster hat. A very young gray face. He was all covered in blankets. When they began to take this mountain of blankets off, a sweet smell impossible to be confused with anything else spread through the department. That was the smell of gangrene. The leg had to be amputated (lack of antibiotics was evident) – still the life was saved.

...The hospital worked in the following rhythm – someone works, and someone sleeps in the corner. At dawn, new wounded were brought from the outskirts of Kyiv. Among them, there was a very young girl. She was brought in on a wheelchair. Her whole side was cut with shrapnel, and every movement was difficult. She quietly asked to go to the toilet. I went to accompany her, so that she wouldn’t faint and could go in there. The door. Two steps down. The door. Step. Another door. A step up into a narrow booth. It was very uncomfortable for her to be accompanied by an outsider. But I asked her not to pay attention to me.

...Many doctors were not Kyiv residents but came to work from towns in the region. Then some of them lost their houses during the siege of Kyiv. When the hospital shifted to a barracks mode, people waited for news from their villages and towns – often occupied or those in which battles were fought. One nurse’s teenage children were left alone for ten days in the village entered by the invaders. We all tried to find words of support and pills to calm her down. It was impossible, though.

Back then, everyone, as it is today, lived with one thought: to expel the occupiers from our land.

…The first months were like a constant search. Search for drugs, external fixation devices, VAC devices, and specific antibiotics. It was necessary to find not only them, but also the opportunity to bring the necessary things to Ukraine. A large scope of work, which has to be done now, in the tenth month of the war, will be made public only after the Victory. Because this is one of the key rules of war that we have to reckon with for security.

... Some foreigners still fail to understand why we do not give up and refuse to make any concessions. And I know why. Because they calculate our chances of victory from the perspective of mathematics. Still, the will cannot be calculated. Although the Russians are outnumbered, as are their weapons, funds, and propaganda.

...However, the truth is on our side. The world is on our side. One of my comrades and the Hero of the upcoming book From the Flame We Born, who lost his leg in 2017, has a tattoo on his hands saying: “Your will is always stronger than your body.” He is still fighting. With prosthesis. And fighting in the war.

...My friend, an efficient volunteer, went to war and now, together with her husband, is responsible for our peace in the north. Since they are in the region rich in mushrooms, in the fall she sent me oven-dried porcini mushrooms and a note. Every time I lose my strength, I open this package, inhale the aroma of mushrooms, and read a note from her. And I feel better.

...We haven’t won the war yet. There are still many hard days and nights ahead. But the Russians have definitely already lost the war. The whole world sees their baseness, cruelty, and lies. We have to reclaim our history with the whole country and at an extremely high cost, with the lives of our people. Page by page.

Missiles that explode a block away from Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv reveal to the world that we had been a State already when our princes had not yet founded Muscovy. After Bucha, there is no need to prove to the world “whether the Russians want war” (a reference to a 1961 anti-war song by Yevgeny Yevtushenko). After the planned destruction of our energy system, Ukraine no longer needs to prove that it was the Russians who organized the artificial famine – the Holodomor of Ukrainians in 1923-1933.

This is a painful history lesson. But it was inevitable. I watch the latest videos from friends who were killed by the Russians, and I know that everything we do and will do now must be for ourselves and for our fallen friend. We must become like ants. While they destroy our anthill, we are rebuilding it. Overcoming our fatigue, pain, and fear.

Read this article in russian and Ukrainian.