The approximately 50 km drive to Kostiantynivka is done at full speed in the ambulance of anesthetist-resuscitator Mariana Bondarchuk, one of the volunteers of the “First Voluntary Mobile Hospital” or PDMSH, the largest Ukrainian non-governmental organization engaged in the care of Ukrainian soldiers.
Part of Sloviansk, a city in eastern Ukraine where the organization is based, it must reach one of the “stabilization points”, these precarious sites where soldiers wounded on the front receive first aid before be evacuated to area hospitals. A blood-curdling routine that Mariana Bondarchuk has performed thousands of times since the start of the invasion.
“Sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes we’ll be out all day and all night,” explains alongside him Oksana Danilo, a 27-year-old nurse who, with Mariana Bondarchuk, forms one of the PDMSH’s “resuscitation brigades”. Met at the beginning of March in the spacious refectory of a psychiatric hospital evacuated at the start of the invasion, the two young women hope to be able to rest after a day in Kostiantynivka. The city has become for several weeks a nerve center for Ukrainian units leaving or returning from Bakhmout, where Mariana Bondarchuk herself worked for several weeks.
In the past two months, the organization claims to have practically doubled the number of its volunteers working on the front line, as the army’s needs are great. After more than a year of war, the approximately 100 volunteers and more than 20 vehicles deployed in Sloviansk by the PDMSH continue to be essential to the Ukrainian forces. And this, despite an army medical service which had, before the Russian invasion, nearly 20,000 men.
“They rely heavily on us”
“There are times when we just need arms”, justifies Vadym (first name changed), an army doctor met in a small village in Donbass, about ten kilometers from the front. The “stabilization point” he leads has taken up residence in a brick building at the top of a hill, surrounded by a muddy parking lot and marked at its entrance by a pile of dirty stretchers. In the vestibule, a few soldiers wait under a dim blue light, while doctors smoke on the steps of the entrance. The two ambulances parked this afternoon near the building both belong to NGOs.
The brutality of the fighting and the incessant artillery strikes on the front line complicate evacuations, and often invalidate the “golden hour” rule, according to which a casualty must arrive on the operating table in the hour after the injury. “Most of the injured arrive in the evening or at nightexplains Vadym. There are fights right now. When night falls, the wounded will be extracted from the positions and evacuated to us. And the festivities can begin. »
The fear of the spring offensive
A delay which only reinforces the importance of specialists like Mariana Bondarchuk, of whom the Ukrainian army is sorely lacking. “The Ukrainian Armed Forces don’t have anesthetists, while we have one in every resuscitation ambulance, that’s why they rely heavily on us,” explains the young woman, who previously worked in a small hospital in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
Like many, the doctor is now anxiously awaiting the spring offensive that kyiv has been preparing for weeks. “We are generally warned a few hours in advance when there is going to be an attack, the time to prepare, she explains. The number of wounded always skyrockets when there is an offensive. »
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