The Russia-Ukraine invasion has brought up many stories, that are worth sharing. Petro Nikitin, a chief trauma surgeon at a Ukraine’s military hospital in Kyiv, shared his story as doctor during these challenging times. Being a doctor has placed him in the middle of the ongoing conflict, fought miles away. The 59-year-old doctor devotes his entire working days, reconstructing bodies of badly wounded soldiers, brought under his care.
“I only Operate,” Petro said, “I do nothing else in my life now. I don’t see my children, who have been evacuated been evacuated, I don’t see my wife, I live by myself, and all I do is treat the wounded,” Petro sadly added.
Amidst the ongoing war, the Ukrainian government hasn’t provided any accurate casualty figures, that it has suffered, since the start of the invasion. Western sources estimate that, about 100,000 Ukrainian troop have perished or wounded from the war, since the February 24 invasion began.
The situation in Ukrainian hospitals are worrying, due to the excessive inflow of wounded soldiers brought on daily basis, to receive medical treatment to their injuries. Some end up in Nikitin’s hospitals, which is understaffed as a result of doctors called away to work in the field medical facilities closer to the frontline.
A day after the invasion began, Nikitin posted a picture on social media, that shows him listening to how to treat a gunshot wound. As head of the Ukrainian chapter of a global association of trauma specialists, Nikitin had urgently planned an online seminar on combat-related traumas that had the attendance of surgeons across the world.
“Every one of us, had relative experience before the invasion, but not in such volume,” Nikitin averred. “The high number of traumas is something new to us,” he explained the situation they are currently faced with.
“I don’t even remember the last time I extracted a bullet,” the surgeon said. Gunshot injuries, have become something of a daily reality to him. The surgeon has been able to familiarize himself with amount of traumatic injuries, that he treats on any given day. Explosive weapons like grenades, artillery rounds, and landmines often cause damage to multiple bodily parts at once.
Taking Difficult Decisions
“We receive people with damaged legs, chests, stomachs and arms, all at once. In such cases, we have to decide which part of the injury should be our priority,” he said.
The military hospital is one of many in Kiev. As a big trauma center, it accepts the highest and critical cases of trauma patients. According to Nikitin, the most complicated cases are usually those involving victims who were treated at the front and spent time in a field hospital before being transferred to the capital.
“We don’t do first aid here. We don’t save lives. That’s done by the medics,” Nikitin added. “What we try to do is return these people to normal life,” he added.
“Because you understand that, your surgery will lead to the disability of the person, it brings no satisfaction to the doctors or to the patients. It’s emotionally hard not only for the patients but for the surgeons,” Nikitin sadly explained, talking about injuries of some patients, that forced them to take difficult and critical decisions.
Shelling of hospitals haven’t been left out of infrastructures, that have been destroyed during this 15 months of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. On March 9, 2022, harrowing reports and pictures from Mariupol, Ukraine, detailed how a Russian airstrike ravaged a maternity and children’s hospital, that was hosting civilians trapped in the war. Since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, that was the third time that explosive weapons have been used by the Russians on hospitals.
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