KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – As chief trauma surgeon at a military hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Petro Nikitin is in the middle of a war raging hundreds of kilometers away. The 59-year-old doctor’s job of repairing the bodies of some of the most seriously injured soldiers is painstaking.
“I’m just operating,” Nikitin said, pausing briefly while his team continued operating on a patient. “I’m not doing anything else in my life now. I don’t see my children who have been evacuated, I don’t see my wife who has been evacuated, I live alone and only treat the wounded.”
While Ukraine’s military does not provide casualty figures, some Western sources estimate that more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since Russia invaded the country nearly 15 months ago.
The eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, has been particularly bitter in recent weeks, where Ukrainian forces have recently regained more territory from Russian forces.
A major Ukrainian counter-offensive is expected in the coming weeks, with more people likely to end up on the operating tables at Nikitin’s hospital, which, like other Ukrainian military hospitals, is understaffed as doctors were withdrawn to work in field hospitals closer to the front lines . The Associated Press agreed not to release information about the Kiev hospital for security reasons.
On February 25, 2022, the day after Russian troops invaded, Nikitin posted a photo on Facebook showing him listening to an Israeli gunshot wound treatment specialist. Surgeons from around the world had agreed to attend an online training session on combat-related injuries hastily organized by Nikitin, president of the Ukrainian section of an international association of trauma specialists.
“Each of us had relevant experience before the invasion, but not on this scale,” Nikitin said. “The high number of traumas is something new for us.”
Gunshot wounds proved rare. “I can’t even remember the last time I got a bullet out,” the surgeon said. But over the long days and months he has become familiar with a range of traumatic injuries: Explosive weapons such as land mines, artillery shells and grenades often damage many parts of the body at once.
“We receive people with damaged legs, chests, abdomens and arms at once,” Nikitin said. “In such cases, we have to decide which part of the injury should be our priority.”
The military hospital is one of several in Kiev. As a top-tier trauma center, it treats the most complex cases, typically those involving patients who were stabilized at the front and spent time in a field hospital before being transferred to the capital, Nikitin said.
“We don’t provide first aid here. We don’t save lives. That’s what the doctors do,” he said. “We try to enable these people to lead a normal life again.”
Treating wounds with damage to soft tissue, bone and the structures connecting nerves and veins is the most difficult for his surgical team, Nikitin said. Sometimes they are forced to amputate a soldier’s arm or leg, which is always a heartbreaking decision “from a moral point of view,” he said.
“Because you understand that your surgery will result in disability for the person, it does not bring satisfaction to either the doctor or the patient,” he said. “It’s an emotional drain not only for the patient, but also for the surgeon.”
Usually, Nikitin comes to the hospital at 7:45 in the morning and stays there until the job is done. Sometimes he doesn’t leave the hospital until around 11:00 p.m. His wife and children fled Ukraine in March 2022 as Russian forces closed in on Kiev. He accompanied his family to the border, but then returned to the city.
As both the Russian and Ukrainian armies prepare for possible spring offensives, his schedule has been reduced to about three operations a day.
Most of the patients he recently treated were injured in fighting around Bakhmut and elsewhere in Donetsk province or in Chernihiv and Sumy provinces in northern Ukraine, which are regularly shelled.
One soldier that Nikitin operated on recently was Mykyta, a native of Bakhmut, who was injured in his lower leg fighting for his hometown and celebrated his 20th birthday shortly after his operation. The AP is withholding his last name per military guidelines.
The young soldier said his last memory of Bachmut formed a “terrible” image in his mind.
“It’s the city where I spent my childhood and the city is destroyed,” he said from his hospital bed. “The city is on fire.”
Compared to the massive trauma some patients suffered, Mykyta’s wound didn’t look that severe, but he could still lose his lower leg, Nikitin said.
Attempts to graft skin over the wound proved unsuccessful, and doctors tried again Tuesday. Nikitin said he was optimistic after the operation but it would be three weeks before anyone knew if the last skin graft worked.
“If it doesn’t work, the next step is amputation,” the surgeon said.
Mykyta is also missing 20 centimeters of bones, which will be Nikitin’s next task if the transplant is successful. The bone treatment will take more than half a year.
“In seven months I can tell you if he’ll ever walk again,” he said.
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David Rising contributed to this story.
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