Is a 21-year-old Ukrainian anesthesiologist saving the lives of soldiers on the front line in Donbass?

A team of field hospital medics led by Ruslan. This article contains a description of shocking scenes.

The Ukrainian army has made significant gains in the south of the country, recently recapturing Kherson, but fierce fighting continues in the east of the country, and casualties continue to mount.

There, in a field hospital under Russian fire, a team of medics, many of them volunteers at the start of the war, are saving soldiers’ lives every day. BBC correspondent Quentin Somerville spent nearly a week with them. The blood, metal, sweat, and dirt have soaked into the walls and floors of the Ukrainian field hospital. Ukrainian military medics scrub all this every day, rubbing with all their strength, but it is impossible to get rid of the metallic smell. The clothes, the ambulances – this smell is everywhere.

“When you wash the blood and then spray with peroxide, this smell always appears,” says 21-year-old Valeria, an anesthesiologist’s assistant. This field hospital was set up in an abandoned building. Here, under constant deafening artillery fire, several medics live and work. During the days I spent with them, Russian shells exploded near the building almost every day, and every day they brought in killed and wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

“I have the best job in the world. I protect heroes,” says Valeria, a nurse anesthetist. The brigade, which I cannot name for security reasons, has already lost two medical points – they were bombed and five of their medics died under fire. Before the war, Valeria worked in a hospital north of Kiev. She had seen pain and suffering before – she says there is nothing harder than trying to revive a dead child. Without saying a word to her family, Valeria volunteered for military service and has been saving soldiers’ lives on one of the most dangerous frontlines ever since. “I have the greatest job in the world. I defend the heroes,” she said. “They protect us, and I am here to protect them, to keep them from dying.” Valeria works on a team of anesthesiologists.

We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what will happen next.

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Valeria is a petite girl with a broad and sincere smile. Her sleeping bag lies in the corner of the room. Next to it on the bare wooden floor is a mat with a cartoon panda and a Yoda doll. A small, resourceful kitten named Marusya keeps Valeria company while she sleeps. Every day here is unpredictable, but it always starts the same way. At 9 a.m., the Ukrainian national anthem comes on the radio. The team is silent for a few moments to honor the memory of the deceased. But then a badly wounded soldier is brought into the operating room, and Valeria and her colleagues get to work. He moans in pain and cries, “Arm, arm!” But his injuries are much worse. He is still conscious, but his condition is critical. With his gray beard, he looks about fifty years old. His face is marked by numerous fragments, and his right eye is missing. At least one finger on his right hand is severed, and blood flows from the back of his head. As they begin to remove his uniform, his marble-white skin is revealed. His name is Sasha, and from the threshold I watch the doctors talking to him, probably explaining to him what they are doing. He screams when the doctors find another wound and treat it. Then they begin to sew up his face. One of the surgeons, 39-year-old Dima, closes the bloody eye socket, his fingers penetrating deep into the patient’s head. The fighter is under anesthesia, but still stretches out his left hand and counts the four remaining fingers of his right hand, grabbing them one by one. The medical team took off his clothes and put on green hand-knitted wool socks to keep him warm; they receive them in boxes from ordinary Ukrainians.

Wool socks keep Sasha’s feet warm while doctors tend to his wounds. Off to the side, in a bulletproof vest and muddy trench uniform, stands a burly man who has found a wounded soldier. He says the soldier could have been injured by a cluster bomb or mortar fire, but he cannot say for sure. The head doctor, 39-year-old Ruslan, is tall and bald, with a thick red beard. We met for the first time last summer when I was here. He has an impressive, even authoritative appearance. He barely speaks the entire time his team is rescuing the injured. They understand each other literally with half a glance. Their job is to stabilize the wounded and transport them to the main hospital for surgery. Next to me is Olya, a pharmacist who also joined the army at the beginning of the war. She is sorting the clothes of the injured soldiers, folding personal belongings into parcels.

Ruslan and Olya take a wounded man named Sasha to the hospital for surgery. For Ruslan, a professional soldier, this war began in Donbass in 2014. He says that the Ukrainian army has not wasted any time all these years: medical care on the battlefield, for example, is much better now, at a level comparable to Western standards. But they lack what Western militaries consider an absolute necessity – helicopters to evacuate the wounded. Instead, the wounded are loaded into an old British ambulance that some of them bought for $7,500. They installed a new engine and are now transporting the wounded to the nearest hospital, 25 kilometers away. According to Ruslan, getting the wounded there in time is the most challenging part of their work. He and Olga accompany a wounded soldier in an ambulance. Olga supports his head with her hands as the car shakes on unlit roads with potholes, while artillery shells burst nearby, lighting up the sky. Ruslan holds the soldier’s hand, talks to him, urges him to respond, and monitors his vital signs.

“Each of these trips is dangerous. We do not know where the Russian occupiers will shoot.” Roman drives a car. He says he has lost count of how many injured he has transported to this main hospital. “Every trip like this is dangerous,” he explains. “We don’t know where the Russian occupiers will shoot. But it’s our job, and we have to do it. It doesn’t matter whether they shoot or not.” A burning building can be seen on the dark road ahead, the tongues of this fierce flame the only source of light for many miles. As they approach the city, the roads improve and Roman picks up the pace. The ambulance quickly passes the checkpoints with its flashing lights. Only an hour after being brought to the field hospital, the injured soldier lands in the hospital. Sasha will live.

The team works together throughout the war. Now it’s time to clean up the field hospital. The team checks equipment, replenishes supplies of medicine, removes pieces of human flesh, and washes off blood. Ruslan smokes, Valeria washes the blood from her hands and sits in the corner watching cartoons on her laptop. Roman cleans the ambulance. The team often refers to itself as a “machine,” a link in a great chain. But their work is not just mechanical – I see the compassion and care they give to their patients. On the other side of the front line are thousands of recently mobilized Russians. They are poorly trained, but they are being thrown into Ukrainian positions, resulting in significant casualties for them. According to some reports, the Russians don’t even have basic supplies like tourniquets to stop bleeding. Neither Moscow nor Kiev discloses full data on its losses, but based on satellite imagery and data from other sources, the American military estimates casualties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at more than 100,000 killed and wounded on each side. The arrival of these Russian recruits has also affected the work of the medical staff, who are now treating more gunshot wounds sustained in close combat. Olga, a pharmacist in peacetime, is the quietest of the group. Among such bright personalities, she is the most modest and reserved. The slender girl is wrapped in a down jacket, wears a hat and large glasses. I asked her what she thought of the person whose life she had just helped to save.

Olya tries to run every morning. Tanks pass her on the way. “I treat every patient with warmth and try to give them at least a small part of it,” she answers. “A part of my warmth, my soul, so that they do not suffer so much. To ease their suffering a little.” Almost every morning she goes for a run on the dirty, broken roads and sees tanks and armored vehicles moving toward the front line. According to Olya, running is an escape from reality. “I always think about peace. I know that this war will end soon and we will all go back to our lives, our families, our work. I do not want to fixate on the war. This team of medics – together for the whole war. When you see them at the table, it’s like watching a family, and yet not long ago, before the war, they didn’t know each other. “They have experienced terrible days, weeks and months together, serving in Bucha, Irpin, Bahmut and now here. Olya and Valeria remember carrying dead or wounded soldiers through forests and fields in the first crazy days of the war. “I think it is impossible to get used to it,” says Olya. “It is very difficult to see wounded soldiers, seriously wounded, there were many of them [in places like] Bucha and Irpin, to see destroyed towns, destroyed villages. It is impossible to describe it with words.

Dinner for field medics: pheasant (shot by the ambulance driver) in oil with lemon, fried liver, pumpkin pie. The team gathers for dinner to celebrate the return from vacation of Yuri, another surgeon in the department. The table is crowded and there is hardly any room. They eat pheasant in oil with lemon, fried liver and mashed potatoes. The pheasant was shot by the ambulance driver. For dessert – pumpkin pie. I first met 42-year-old Yuri in the summer. At the time, he wore only gray camouflage shorts and spent his free time combing fields with a metal detector in search of “treasure”-his findings included several ancient coins and a silver ring. One of the defining aspects of this war was the willingness of Ukrainians to go and fight. Yuri, unlike Ruslan, is not a military man, but like many others I met, he found it natural to leave civilian life to fight for his country and defend his family.

“I was happy to go home and spend time with my kids,” says Yuri, who recently returned from vacation. “Someone has to fight, while others have to live,” he tells me. “Because if everything turns into total war, we will become, so to speak, numb, hardened, without feelings.” He describes going home to visit his 12- and 14-year-old sons. “The days went by so fast,” he sighs. The war, he said, is a responsibility that has fallen on his generation so that their children can live in peace. “I am happy that my wife and children do not experience all the emotional upheavals that we are subjected to here. We are like a protective layer that blocks all the hardships of war,” he says.

The next day, a breathless soldier rushes into the field hospital. He lifts his hand and shows two fingers. “Maybe they are wounded,” I think to myself. But no, he needs two corpse bags. One for the body lying next to the wounded in the dark green army truck, and another, apparently, for another one. Ruslan and his colleague help to carefully remove the stretcher with the body. That day there was a pause in the artillery fire – and the singing of birds could be heard. All the days I was there were cold, but this one was warm, almost like spring. I stand at a distance and watch. Half of the soldier’s body is missing, his chest and abdomen are a mess of blood and bones. A shell from a Russian tank had hit his vehicle. The assembled medics quietly and carefully place his remains in a thick black plastic body bag. The strong zipper is closed and the van drives away to the rear mortuary. In the hand of one of the departing soldiers are four neatly folded body bags. The wounds the team is dealing with are horrific. The medics show them to me on their cell phones: men with severed limbs, pieces of flesh hanging from exposed bones, a fragment of a tape cassette stuck in the abdomen. In one of the videos, they amputate a wounded leg and put it in a black bag with the pants and boot. For Valeria, the scariest part of the job is when the “constructors” arrive. These are the body parts of soldiers that have to be assembled for burial. “When you tried [to save the wounded] and failed, that’s one thing, but when you can’t do anything anymore, you feel your own helplessness,” she says. “I think that’s the scariest thing, and not just for me.” Valeria’s most vivid memories are of young wounded and killed people: “When the date of birth is 2003, you understand that this person is 18 years old, that he has seen very little in life, maybe he hasn’t even kissed yet, but he already sees death. I feel very sorry for them. I remember their faces and their wounds very well. “I remember these guys – they never lost their spirit, even when they were lying in front of us without arms or legs. They were joking. It’s impossible not to admire the strength of their spirit. Even if they don’t have weapons in their hands – they have such powerful weapons in their hearts. In war, courage becomes something natural. In Ruslan’s team he has an abundance of it and, according to him, he “gives in” only when he leaves home and says goodbye to his little daughters. “I try to leave home as soon as possible, because the longer I wait, the more they worry,” he says.