Kharkiv Oblast.
Our reporters visited a military hospital near the front lines in Ukraine. This is how they experienced the everyday life of the soldiers there.
The beds in hospital room are close together. The window is glued with black foil, it is a protection against splinters, if one bullet should strike nearby. The foil is also used for blackout. Six soldiers lie in the room, some with bandages on their arms or legs. Their camouflage jackets with the patches of their units hang on a cloakroom. Children’s drawings are stuck to the walls, showing tanks and rockets. Balloons dangle from the ceiling.
The air is stuffy. It smells of sweat, disinfectant, floor wax, food. “Our most important task here is to mentally stabilize the men so that they can go back to the front,” says the lieutenant colonel Victor Pysanko. The 35-year-old is the head of the hospital in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine War: With the bus across the war-torn country
Before the hospital there is a big bus, painted red and white, which left the Ukrainian border twelve hours earlier. It is a coach converted into an ambulance belonging to the Norwegian aid organization Team Humanity, which has been rescuing people from the embattled areas in the south and east since the start of the Russian raid last February. Seriously injured people can be transported on the bus. “We have been asked to take injured soldiers to a hospital,” says Salam Aldeen, the head of the aid organization, who lives in Berlin.
Aldeen is a restless, driven man with a hoarse voice who needs little sleep. They have saved around 14,000 people in the past few months. From the border, the bus drove across the war-torn country. Odesa. Mykolayiv. Dnipro. Closer and closer to the front. Exactly where the journey ends, where the hospital that he finally reaches is located, is allowed out security reasons not be written. We are there for around 16 hours and can talk to doctors and patients.
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There isn’t much laughter
the Town is about 90 kilometers away from the front. The heavy artillery battles there can be heard as constant booming. It’s freezing cold on this January day. The hospital is a four-story white and gray brick building, built in the 1970’s and has seen better days. Outside the clinic are civilian ambulances and old dark green military trucks with a cross on them. They also bring the injured here.
Before the hospital men stand and smoke. Most wear uniform jackets, including jogging pants, sweaters, slippers. Some talk to themselves, others talk to each other. Everyone looks tired. There isn’t much laughter. Inside there is a hustle and bustle. Mattresses, blankets and clothing are piled up in the corridors; they are donations from the local population. Crutches and wheelchairs are lying all over the place in one room.
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Children, church officials and singers are supposed to cheer up the wounded soldiers
“We are the second line of medical here after the field hospitals care” explains Viktor Pysanko, the head of the hospital. Four other officers are stationed here with him, the other nurses and doctors have worked here before or are volunteers. Until a month ago it was a civilian facility. Now only wounded soldiers are lying here, there are 200 today. Pysanko says he switched the hospital to wartime operations on his own initiative, which is financed by private donations.
“It is important to me to involve the community in caring for the injured. This war is a war of the nation,” says the officer who used to work for the United Nations in the United Nations Congo worked as a doctor and fought in the Ukrainian Airborne Forces. Children, church representatives or singers come to the hospital. Some to cheer up the men, others to give them spiritual support. The children come and draw pictures for the soldiers or write them letters “so that the men know what they are fighting for,” says Pysanko. “We are fighting for our freedom and the future of these children.” He says: 80 percent of those who come from the front don’t want to go back. “Once we’ve motivated them, 80 percent return.”
Lubov is sitting in her place on the first floor. She is 64 and has been a nurse at the home for almost forty years. She does not want to give her last name. When the war started, they had to live in the small town because of the bombings always sitting in cellars, says the little woman with the dyed black hair. “That was very hard.” In a notebook, she documents the names of the newcomers by hand, she measures their blood pressure and whether they have a fever. “I know they protect our homeland,” she says. “But I think it’s bad if they have to go back to the front. They are like my children.” She lovingly admonishes them: “Please stay alive.”
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Hundreds are injured or die every day
It is unclear how many Ukrainian soldiers have been injured or died since the start of Putin’s war. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense does not publish exact figures. But in the battle for Bachmut alone there are said to be hundreds. Every day. Only those who are not seriously injured end up in the hospital. They treat gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries, frostbite, men who have broken arms or legs in accidents. Here alone they have already taken care of about a thousand men. Soldiers with more severe injuries are taken to the larger cities. Here they only have an operating room.
In the sickrooms with the walls painted mint green, the injured soldiers lie on old mattresses. “The supply is good here,” says one and laughs, “the food is much better than at the front.” He is in his mid-40s, has a seven-day beard and a bandage around his leg. “I was hit by shrapnel,” he says, “but I’m fine.” When he’s back at the front, “then I’ll pay the Russians back.” He grins again, makes a victory sign. The others also try to show their will to win. Not everyone succeeds.
The eyes of the soldiers stare into space
The next morning a bus arrives, originally white, now streaked with gray and brown, the windows blinded by dust. Soldiers get out, many are limping, some have to be supported. They have just come from the front near the town of Bakhmut, which has been heavily fought over for months, their uniforms are dirty. You are exhausted. Her eyes stare into space. Hardly anyone says anything. They board the Team Humanity bus, which takes them to another nearby hospital. There’s no more room for them here.
Viktor Pysanko watches the men change trains. He looks tired. “There’s no point in holding a ruined city like Bakhmut when we have to sacrifice more lives,” he finally says. “We’re losing our best. We have to save lives.” He wants to motivate the men to fight. But it should be a fight that is not pointless.
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