The fighting and violence in Ukraine is so prolific that hospitals are faced with a deluge of civilians, often arriving with wounds unknown to younger doctors. And as in other conflicts, including in Syria, the Russians are targeting these medical facilities, which have so far damaged 279 and completely decimated another 19, Ukraine’s health minister said.
DailyExpertNews’s Jake Tapper visited a hospital in the west of the country, where patients from the east and south had to travel hundreds of miles to receive safe treatment.
Olga Zhuchenko survived seven bombs that hit her neighborhood in the Luhansk region, but is now in a hospital bed and can never walk again.
“I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost my apartment, my property, my health,” she told DailyExpertNews through a translator. “We didn’t expect to see it. We have always counted Russians as brotherly people. We never hoped they would wipe us out like that.”
Nearly two months into the conflict, it has become clear that attacks on civilian neighborhoods — such as Zhuchenk’s — are no accident, DailyExpertNews reported.
“The facts lead to only one conclusion. The Russians are deliberately slaughtering Ukrainians. Mommies and daddies, kids, grandparents,” Tapper continued.
Meanwhile, American doctors have traveled to Ukraine, hoping to provide help and experience gained during their time in the Middle East.
“We wanted to share information about our experiences in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Dr. John Holcomb, the professor of surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Tapper at the hospital.
The injuries suffered by Ukrainian civilians are so brutal that local doctors are confronted with cases they have never seen before.
“The injury we have now is unbelievable,” revealed Dr. Hna Herych, chief of surgery at a Ukrainian hospital. He has seen an influx of thousands of patients and has a message to share.
“I want the world to know that they need to know that the Russian troops are not fighting with the Ukrainian army, but with the Ukrainian people,” he told Tapper. “They’re killing civilians, they’re killing children, they’re destroying our country.”
And the war hurts Ukrainians in many ways, except with bullets and bombs.
Olha Akynshyn was forced to celebrate her 45th birthday from a hospital bed after she suffered a serious car accident while fleeing the Kharkiv region with her husband and son.
“We had a happy life. Everything was perfect and then everything changed very abruptly,” she told Tapper through a translator.
After hiding in a basement for a month amid relentless shelling, Akynshyn and her family made the decision to get into their car and flee when the adjacent building was destroyed. She hadn’t slept for two days and had a horrific car accident.
“We were so scared, especially our child was so scared that we couldn’t stay anymore,” she said.
Now Akynshyn isn’t sure if she’ll ever be able to return to her old town or her old life.
“The school where my child learned has been destroyed, but I hope that if our home remains safe, we will return and rebuild. Our neighbor will rebuild our village, our city. I love my Ukraine so much, I just wish I could live here in Ukraine,” she said.
