Civilians are different: grateful and not, adequate and traumatized, but if you have undertaken a humanitarian mission, you must curb all assessments and judgments and just do your job. But in flashpoints, the boundaries blur: a second ago you were providing humanitarian aid to civilian seniors, and in a second you were already saving the life of Bakhmut's defender.
Arriving in the Donetsk region to the volunteers of the Baza.ua Public Organization, I found the boys and girls in a dramatic moment. They had just completed another visit of medics to the frontline and de-occupied territories, where they provided consultative and diagnostic assistance to the civilian population. In the ambulance were Ihor and Mykhailo, Ukrainian volunteers from Kyiv who have been working with the civilian population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for a long time. Fredi from Germany, a volunteer with experience in hot spots, and Alex, a photographer and volunteer from Denmark, were also with them. There were also two doctors in the crew - Maryna and Bohdan. The car moved smoothly through the noisy and ruined Bakhmut, where it was stopped by the military. One of them ran up and asked for help - an "ambulance" was needed to help a wounded soldier. We still needed to get to the hospital, somehow stabilizing the defender. A wounded serviceman was taken to a car, and every movement of the burden responded with pain in his body and he broke out with a frantic scream. And so, the entire volunteer team together with a fellow soldier started…
The injuries were multiple: neck, hands, legs - volunteers immediately divided the "spheres of responsibility". All the first-aid kits were in motion: someone was cutting clothes (it was at this moment that it became clear that the scissors in the first-aid kits are ineffective, and you should always have a more effective tool at hand). Someone tamponed wounds, and someone replaced tourniquets…
After weighing the situation, Alex handed over his first-aid kit to help the fighter and decided to record this moment with a camera — the moment of the first rescue of a defender for Baza.ua. The wounded man screamed in pain, and the boys and girls did everything to keep him from losing consciousness. They encouraged him, and asked questions to switch his brain to something other than pain. So he told me that his name was Dima, and that three days ago he became a father…
Having done everything possible, the volunteers transferred the man to the hospital. The situation in Bakhmut is very tense, the hospital is overloaded, and the volunteers still have a lot of work to do with civilians, so the participants of this event parted ways. Unfortunately, the moment was missed, and no information other than the name and the nature of the injuries remained from that day.
In the evening, at the base, volunteers gathered to reflect on this event. They reviewed the photos and videos, tried to analyze whether everything was done correctly from the technical point of view, and how to correct inaccuracies in the future. I looked at them and saw how deeply each of them lived this new experience and the main question: have we done enough to save him?
The soldier's blood-soaked clothes were washed, emotions subsided a little, but everyone really wanted to know what happened to Dima next. During the next trip to Bakhmut, volunteer Mykhailo visited the hospital to learn something about him. There they say:
- We have so many such Dimаs every day... I would like to know at least some details. If he survived, then you should look for such and such places…
It seems that the thread has broken.
In a few days, volunteer doctor Maryna, who was in that rescue vehicle, was going to work in one of the rear hospitals of our great country. This is her daily business: the faces of wounded defenders change one after another. Until the gaze stops at one thing... Looking at him, Maryna recognized something very familiar. And yes, it was Dima. Alive and smiling. Among the many thousands of soldiers, among the many rear hospitals, among all the doctors in Ukraine who are working on treating the wounded, the meeting of Maryna and Dima really looks like a one in a million case.
Doctor Maryna Dvorska with the rescued soldier
Crying with happiness, Maryna sent the volunteers a joint photo with the found soldier. Dima even got up from the cart for the photo. And at that moment, all these people - volunteers and doctors, scattered around the country in their work, exploded with resounding joy. It was love in its purest form and it flowed through all their countless coordination chats together.
Now Dima is being treated. He will be in rehabilitation for some time, and the volunteers and I will visit him and have a chat as soon as he recovers a little. By the way, it turned out that Dima's son, who was born three days before all these events, is his third child. But I will write more about the fighter later.
Especially for Espreso
Photo: Alexander Zehnter
About the author. Khrystyna Yatskiv, journalist, Espreso TV presenter
The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.