Since the withdrawal of the Russian army from the kyiv region, the invasion has been concentrated in eastern Ukraine. In Kharkiv, the population, exhausted by more than a month of war, sees more and more dead and wounded as the fighting intensifies. Immersion in a hospital.
The city of Kharkiv was bombed more than 120 times in 48 hours on April 9 and 10, 2022, killing 13 people, including a child, and injuring dozens. The city’s hospitals, overwhelmed and saturated, who can be targets, face several challenges. “We are carrying out operations for ordinary patients, but also for war wounded, while still having our services overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases”, specifies Yuri, director of one of the hospitals. Sitting behind an imposing desk, the doctor, specializing in pediatrics, does not hide the difficulties of his hospital services. “Before the war, we were 400 people including doctors, surgeons, nurses and maintenance staff. But many specialists have gone abroad because of the bombardments, reducing our numbers,” he laments.
In the specialized unit for the war wounded, a young man of 33, wearing a blue blouse, is busy in a hallway. Alexi is the head of the traumatology service, an essential service in times of armed conflict. “I have to take care of 24 injured people. We must not hold them too long, for safety reasons, because we remain a permanent target of bombardments. At the moment, nine surgeons operate daily,” explains the doctor between two consultations. “I discovered the practice of war medicine. Before, I only had theoretical training…”
Illegal ammunition
In a sanitized room with no frills, six beds are arranged facing large windows that overlook a park. A woman helps remove the shoes of a man with a long beard so that he lies down on the second bed to the right of the room. Bogdan, 36, has his clothes stained with blood, several bandages and a fixer holding his right arm. Irena, his wife, has been by his side night and day since the attack which left seven dead and 40 injured, including her husband. “They all dropped like flies, in two seconds,” recalls Irena, who is reviewing a video on her mobile phone of the attack filmed by a surveillance camera. Beneath his bloodstained sheet, Bogdan looks back on the moment of hell that threw him to the ground. “Before curfew, at 6 p.m., I went out for a run, because the weather was good. After a multitude of muffled noises, I felt like a kind of rain of splinters. People around me fell one by one. Bogdan was the victim of a cluster bomb on April 3, 2022, which is prohibited by the Convention on Cluster Munitions
His wife, Irena, alerted by the detonation, rushes to her window and sees her husband lying bleeding. In pajamas and a dressing gown, she joins him as quickly as possible to bring him first aid, by cutting pieces of fabric from his clothes. The ambulances, which began triaging the wounded, did not transport Bogdan, who was still conscious, as a priority.
“It was finally a Territorial Defense van alerted by the firefighters that transported him to the hospital,” recalls Irena. “I never imagined finding myself in such a situation, because I always obeyed the rules of the curfew and the alerts. This time, it was a plane that dropped prohibited ammunition,” the young man said sadly, lowering his blue eyes. “Everything will change now, I will be afraid all my life, even of a bottle that bursts. Be that as it may, waging war is always bad. No civilian should suffer from it”, he concludes, annoyed
According to Alexi, his doctor, Bogdan, injured in his legs and heavily in his right arm, will have to wait more than six months, between treatment and rehabilitation, before being able to regain the use of his arm. To begin his long convalescence, Bogdan can count on his wife. For the past two days, he has finally been able to stroll through the corridors of the hospital, from where one hears, as throughout the city, the dull sounds of the bombardments of this war that his roommate, Constantin, sought to flee. from 2016.
“I was living in Donetsk when the war started in 2014. I had already survived bombardments,” recalls this former college teacher. “I came to Kharkiv looking for safety, but the war caught up with me again. The 47-year-old man, wearing a chain around his neck with a cross, was 200 meters from Bogdan. “The impact of this cluster munition was considerable, over hundreds of meters. It pierced around fifty bodies, ”says Constantin.
Civilians targeted
In another aisle of the war wounded unit, a room accommodates six women aged 50 to 70. All have serious injuries. Fatigue and pain can be read on their faces. One of them, Yelena, 54, has a knee in critical condition. “When I arrived at the hospital, the doctors wanted to amputate me. It’s not resolved yet, but I can feel my foot,” the woman sadly notes.
“With my husband, we moved in with our children and our grandchildren, who fled abroad. Their neighborhood was less bombed than ours,” says Yelena. The building where she found refuge with her husband faces a school transformed into a food aid distribution centre. Yelena remembers this March 9, “the day after Women’s Day”. At 8:30 a.m., three missiles fell on the school.
“Fortunately the volunteers couldn’t bring food parcels that day, so I was the only one in the area. I was getting out of my husband’s car, and at that moment the bombs went off. My husband was not injured. »
Since her hospitalization, Yelena and the other women sharing her room have been trying to have positive discussions, to hold on. Between the nostalgia of a past where they were surrounded by their loved ones and the hope of a future without war. “My children and grandchildren fled to the United States via Mexico. I dream of flying to New York and meeting them,” Yelena says.
Medics cannot transport her to heal her away from combat. Yelena therefore resigned herself to staying. “My children are worried that I am still here. But in this state, I could only be evacuated by an air ambulance. »
Fortunately, Yelena can count on her husband, who visits her every day with supper before curfew. “All day long, he distributes bread throughout Kharkiv, it’s dangerous. Every evening, he is still by my side. Yelena shows a lucky charm he gave her, in flower, for her recovery. At all times, hospital staff in Kharkiv must be ready to care for large numbers of wounded civilians who have become the targets of unconventional weapons, without ever having been prepared.