In the courtyard of a hospital in Bakhmout, slumped soldiers landed where they could: on the degraded steps, at the foot of a rusty railing. A cigarette in your mouth, or simply enjoying the coolness of the shade, anxious, with a bandage on your eye or in your hand. They form a pictorial setting: that of the cruel war that is unfolding on the approximately 500 kilometer long front that splits the Donbass. An artillery war that destroys the lives of soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. At the end of May, President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that between 50 and 100 soldiers from his army lost their lives there every day.
Parked there are a few dark green military cars and ambulances. Five Red Cross medical vehicles follow, doors wide open, ready to evacuate civilians injured by the bombings, elderly or chronically ill. The atmosphere is moistly calm. Only the artillery fire from the Ukrainian positions gives rhythm to the passing minutes.
A forty-year-old whose square shoulders struggle to fit into his scarlet bulletproof vest, his arms tattooed like a hipster, jumpscares. It electrifies the atmosphere. This is Taras Didenko, team leader. He is in charge of the twelve first responders of the Red Cross, whom he takes care of “like his children”.
Taras, who proudly bears the first name of a famous Ukrainian poet, gives orders with a military tone, but with a warm cordiality. He deeply loves his team, composed by word of mouth. All have agreed to come to Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine, a territory where pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army have been clashing for eight years. This is where the fighting has been concentrated since the withdrawal of Russian forces from the suburbs of kyiv on April 2, 2022.
Taras looks at his watch. The signal is launched: in a few minutes, nine patients are accompanied from inside the hospital, forbidden to journalists, to the ambulances. Bathed in the rays of a squalid spring, the team pours them a glass of water and takes their vital signs. Attached to their feet or their arms, a colored paper indicates their destination.
The gestures are precise. Many of the team have worked in wartime. Taras started in 2014, at the start of the war between Ukraine and Russia. “It’s a hundred times more dangerous today. The strike force is more intense, and the war is global,” he said, referring to the humanitarian aid he had been able to deliver eight years earlier to Mariupol, an industrial coastal city, a martyr of Russian artillery and today now occupied by Kremlin men. With the back of his hand, he sweeps the air to dispel his fear: “This is not the time to talk about difficult times. His smile faded for a moment, revealing the horror of the injuries he had witnessed during these exfiltrations near the front.
Bits of joy behind the fear
He turns to affectionately reprimand a lady who has a dozen barely concealed stitches under her white hair. She came on foot, alone, with an almost empty plastic bag in her hand. “We had to wait! Taras says with a laugh, before helping him climb into the ambulance.
Most of Taras’ orphans are isolated elderly people. Their families have already fled the war-torn region. Nadia is one of those people. It was his neighbor, Svetlana, 49, who alerted the police, worried about the prolonged silence. After breaking open the door to her apartment, she found her lying on the floor with a stroke.
Today planted with conviction in the middle of the square of burning asphalt, Svetlana inquires about the health of the old lady as if she were her own mother.
Yelena, 20, reassures her. Red hair, this tiny piece of woman seems ready for anything. In March, it even crossed Russian lines to evacuate civilians from Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv, a city whose streets are now stained with civilian blood. “We were put on the ground, guns to our temples. They were looking for tattoos, examining our fingers to see if we had handled weapons. I was really scared. Rape is what terrified me the most. »
Committed for three years to the Red Cross, the young Kievan finds “a little human joy” by helping others. Despite the attack at the end of May on a humanitarian bus in which the French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was killed, Yelena continues to carry out her work despite the danger. This is his second three-week stay near the front. “After two or three days in the region, you get used to it psychologically, but the first days are a bit stressful. »
She slams the door of the vehicle and it’s off. A little less than two hours of road where the checkpoints form the only obstacles slowing down the convoy: the streets are empty, the majority of the inhabitants having fled the region towards the Ukrainian West or towards neighboring countries.
A train and care
Arrived at Pokrovsk station, Emma, 83, lying on a stretcher, sketches a toothless smile as she adjusts her scarf: “I am old, but nice! She injured her hip at the start of the war, but she couldn’t get treatment. She lets herself be carried by the young lads of the Red Cross to the train that will take her to Lviv, the regional capital of a West almost spared by the war, which today hosts thousands of displaced people.
Volodymyr, leaning heavily on a cane even as he floats in his threadbare clothes, wonders where he is going. No one can give him an exact answer: some patients will go down to Ternopil, others to Lviv. Some will remain in Ukraine, while others will go into exile as far as Europe.
It’s the 25the medical train chartered by Médecins sans frontières (MSF) from the east of the country. A total of 653 people were able to make the journey, cared for by a majority of Ukrainians, many of whom “are displaced themselves, young and caring”, according to Stephen Davidson, 32. After years of tree planting in Western Canada, this Newcastle native traded the great outdoors for the medical world.
“This train is a first for Doctors Without Borders. It is completely adapted for the Ukrainian situation,” he says. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, the country’s airspace has been closed and many airports and railway infrastructures have been bombed. The United Nations assures that at least 9394 Ukrainian civilians have lost their lives. The Ukrainian authorities speak of 22,000 deaths in Mariupol alone.