FROM OUR REPORTER
BAKHMUT – “Of course I’m here, right? But where else could I be, since I studied medicine and can help treat our fighters?” Maria M. is surprised when we ask her why she volunteered for the medical units of the Ukrainian army a year ago go. “How could I stay at home, or maybe flee abroad, knowing that so many of my comrades were being recruited to stop the Russian invasion? When Putin decided to attack us, I was stunned: I couldn’t believe that this could happen in our era. Even my father Roman, who is 48 years old and an intelligence officer, did not expect that the Russians really wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine. But now we’re both here, on Bakhmut’s front line, the hottest in the war right now. And we will not leave, I will only finish my master’s degree in psychology and traumatology at Ternopil University if we win. But the wounded in the field were my daily lessons,” he tells us in the tiny collection point for the wounded who were brought from the fields to the front of the northern trenches.
There is a 24/7 alert. They are quartered in a farmhouse facing the street, every two or three minutes the air is shattered by explosions that echo ominously on the horizon as night falls. Maria is 25 years old, she received her diploma in psychology from the University of Ivano-Frankivsk, her hometown in the west of the country. And now use the breaks to follow the master’s courses remotely. “It’s not easy, but connections via Starlink help a lot. We soldiers are connected, even when enemy bombing raids bring much of the nation’s infrastructure to its knees. The Russians are here, in front of us, less than four miles away. They keep bombing us, although I have to say the worst was a week ago, there were very dangerous moments, artillery and rockets made that area a living hell. For 48 hours we treated and stabilized hundreds of wounded people who were being transported to hospitals in the backcountry. 80 percent were injured by fragments of bombs, especially artillery, only 5 percent were caused by bullets,” he adds.
At the nearby emergency room, we just witnessed the arrival of 41-year-old infantryman Andrei, who was hit by shrapnel in the neck and right shoulder, and was dripping blood onto his chest. Doctors cleaned him up, his arm was bandaged, then the ambulance drove about half an hour to the main regional medical point, where he was stabilized and prepared for four-hour transfer to Dnipro’s major hospitals. How many injured? “No comment, the number is forbidden,” Maria and her colleagues replied, even though the NATO commandos report about 200 Ukrainians killed and hundreds more wounded every day, most of them right here, in the Bakhmut arc. Maria explains that they need bandages and tourniquets to stop the bleeding, kits to seal lung wounds, and disposable syringes.
The situation seems to have improved somewhat in the last two days. The Russian commands announce progress and that they have inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy; from Kiev the general staff replied that it had killed more than 1,000 Russians in 24 hours. But here at the front, the soldiers seem to be taking a breather, the 120mm mortar batteries that fired non-stop four days ago are now so quiet that the orderly platoon finds time to cook a hot meal of sauerkraut, accompanied by « vareniki », stuffed ravioli.
Maria moves as if she were at home. On quiet nights, he sleeps on a sofa in the dressing room. He says: “Three months ago I met a boy my age here, and we’ve been together ever since. We don’t have much time to meet. But it’s an intense story: the war helps to distinguish the important from the superfluous, and every decision becomes relevant».