Evacuation of the wounded, crowdfunding and fatigue. Ukrainian soldiers describe a typical day on the Kharkiv front

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Friday 11 October 2024, by DAVYDENKO Polina, DOBEŠ Lukáš

  

A report from the Kharkiv direction of the front and an interview with medic Kuba describe how the position of women in the army has changed during the ten-year war. On the Bakhmut direction, drone operators from the Black Raven company admit to fatigue, but also unwavering motivation.

We are waiting in Kharkiv in the parking lot near the Saltivka housing estate. Before long, a truck arrives, from which a woman in camouflage gets out. She has black, tightly pulled hair and is holding a smartphone in her hand, into which she is constantly talking. Once she hangs up, she introduces herself as Kuba. Her colleague Karabin hands us a chilled bottle of water. It’s one of the hottest days of the summer and we’re sitting next to a bombed-out little cabin that burned down only two days ago. A local stray dog still lies in front of the entrance. He was probably used to waiting outside the store for scraps from saleswomen or generous passers-by.

Kuba is a former dancer and designer. As a medic, she has been on the front since the outbreak of the war in Donbass. Service after 2014 and before the full-fledged invasions often leads to transfer between volunteer battalions and service in the regular armed forces. The same transfer also met Cuba. After experience in the Hospitaliers and DaVinci’s Wolves volunteer brigades, she co-founded the Ulf health service. "When I felt that I no longer had much to do in Donbass, I decided to return to civilian life from Ulf. There were enough medics for the length of the queue at that time. I think I’m more of a creative person, I wasn’t born with the prerequisites to fight. That’s how some people like to say now, that some people are born that way and others aren’t.’

During a three-year break from the fighting, she devoted herself to the fashion brand Cubitus Dei, and thanks to her own experience of returning from the front to ordinary society, she also helped develop the Ukrainian Women’s Veteran Movement and its Veteranka sewing workshop. Since the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), as Ukraine officially calls the first phase of the war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, the movement has been involved in promoting various women’s issues in the military. One of its greatest achievements is the granting of combat roles to women. “Previously, even if a woman was a sniper, completely on the line of contact, she had an officially registered position as a seamstress or a cook.” This inevitably led to complexities, both from the side of bureaucracy and in the matter of granting the status of female veterans.

Where government supplies fall short, invention comes from resources collected from volunteers. Fundraising in a crisis brought a parallel competition for attention.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian Women’s Veteran Movement formed a rapid response and supply staff with members of the women’s veteran movement in Kyiv. However, Kuba did not remain in the volunteer movement for long after the invasion began. She didn’t feel like there were many other options in her decision about whether to return to the front. “It was clear to me that I had no choice. I had valuable experience, acquired habits and a general understanding of what is needed in a full-fledged war. When the length of the queue of patients increased so drastically, it was clear that there could not be enough professional medics in the ranks of the army. More people were needed, after all, as in all positions in the military. There was a huge need to teach even the very basics, such as how to handle a tactical tourniquet, how to give first aid to yourself or your comrade. In general, I consider people the most valuable thing. Even if we receive weapons, we must always have someone who can use them,” says Kuba.

“When I returned and transferred to the armed forces of the 92^nd Brigade, I was given the position of gunner. To this day, I have no idea what a cannon looks like. I now officially have the position of paramedic at the health center.” Kuba laughs, because the position of paramedic doesn’t really correspond to her daily reality either. Although Kuba has extensive experience in treating the seriously wounded, she cannot officially be the commander of the medical service due to her lack of medical training. Even so, she effectively commands the evacuation of the entire battalion, thanks to her knowledge and the new methods she comes up with. “I don’t really care how I’m [officially] defined, I just want to be useful.”

Evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield

When Kuba describes what her typical day looks like, she mentions, in addition to training on the training grounds, the coordination of the transport of the wounded and now also often remote consultations. Experienced procedures of evacuation according to the Western model cannot stand in a situation complicated by the number of drone attacks. The current evacuation process is incomparably longer than before. Today, unfortunately, it is common for the seriously injured to wait days or even weeks on the line of communication due to the lack of staff and the dangerous situation.

Even in medical practice, according to Kuba, elements of mutual assistance and horizontality appear in the command of an army made up largely of voluntarily mobilized “ordinary people”. Based on the experience brought by the defense of Bakhmut a year ago, her unit therefore came up with procedures for remotely helping those in the places of the hottest battles: "Even infantry soldiers who find themselves in complete hell, where noone would think they have a chance.’

“>It is a series of procedures that fighters with basic training are usually not allowed to perform themselves, they are supposed to wait for a more experienced medic. This includes any loosening of the tourniquet on an injured limb. Thus, Kuba often helps soldiers overcome their fears of more demanding procedures such as wound tamponin. With a consultation, they help prevent lifelong disability.”Although they are often afraid of tamponing a wound in a field shelter and in complete darkness, we stimulate them via radio so that they can do it. We say that they have to manage it somehow and we encourage them, for example, by saying that there is not much time left. We also deal with situations where the tourniquet must not be removed, but can be moved. If amputation is necessary later, the injured person will be left with a larger part of the limb, knee or elbow, and his whole life will be much easier. Although we cannot hear the call for evacuation immediately, we are at least present from a distance." Thanks to consultations, they also monitor the wounded from the moment of injury to the point of stabilization. Such monitoring is essential for rescue. There is often neither the space nor the conditions in combat to record the time of applying treatment to the wound and changes in status since the injury.

Remote consultation is psychologically demanding not only for those applying treatment according to remote advice, but also for the remote medics. As Kuba points out, whether a given medic from her unit can handle such a consultation certainly does not depend only on professional knowledge and protocols. Psychological barriers play a much bigger role. “You take responsibility even from a distance, even though you can’t see the injury. But I think we’ve at least saved a lot of arms and legs since the introduction of remote consultations. Not to mention lives.”I am in charge of the supply. I have certain options because of my history, and many people who know me want to send something to our brigade - medicine, equipment or something else. Thanks to my capabilities, I can then redirect it to where it is needed."

Influencership during the war

The situation of the media influencer is telling for today’s situation. Where government supplies fall short, invention comes from resources collected from volunteers. Fundraising in a crisis has brought a parallel competition for attention. As a rule, when a brigade has attention on social networks, it also has greater volunteer support. For individuals on the frontline, additional funding from fundraising brings an additional burden: “Of course, if I didn’t publish beautiful photos and videos of a handsome soldier holding first aid kits, I wouldn’t have anything to buy more first aid kits. Photo reports take a lot of time. I can’t always take pictures of myself with the things delivered, so I always have to take a picture of the person I’m giving the things to. Recently it was, for example, a stretcher. They promised me that they would take a picture with them before leaving, but the stretcher is already in the field. They’re evacuating someone on them, and it’s clear that no one will take a photo with someone lying on stretcher just for a PR thank-you.”

The monthly consumption of tourniquets is now at its peak, and there is a shortage of them, for the first time since the total shortage at the start of the invasion. Kuba also has problems with completing collections and supplying medical supplies to soldiers: "Before, I never experienced a situation where I ran out of tourniquets, I always had a reserve. I normally get packages with dozens of items and now I’m literally down to zero. In an emergency, I already had to dismantle complete first-aid kits in order to have enough tourniquets for supplies. But then I couldn’t give out the incomplete first aid kits. We have four limbs, so four pieces of tourniquets per soldier is the bare minimum. Not to mention the situation where they have to use two or three tourniquets on the wound, because the first one did not tighten the wound enough.’

The position of women in the military

During the ten years of the war, the acceptance of women in the military has changed radically. Although Kuba is now a respected medicand no longer alludes to problematic situations, she recalls that the earlier attitude towards women in the army was not so welcoming: some form of sexism. "There are also those who are still against women serving in the army. It seems to me that even if I carried them out of a burning house in my arms, they would still say, ’Damn, what was the need for a woman here?’ But the army is changing. The attitude towards women is changing and the women themselves in the army are also changing. They are developing and proving their effectiveness. We recently had a new woman come to us. We are just getting her started on the whole process and all the guys on our team are absolutely fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl. The main thing is that one does one’s job.’’

Changes in the army can also be observed on the border between the symbolic and practical levels. In addition to women’s combat positions, one of these is the uniform itself, which indicates military affiliation. It was the Veteranka workshop, which Kuba is behind, that participated in the competition of the Ministry of Defense for the design of the female uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “The issue of comfort is extremely important. In civilian life we can easily accept to wear clothes tailored to men’s measurements, since we are not so concerned about comfort, but not here. Here we are constantly in conditions where comfort decides whether we can fulfill the assignment. Of course, the first example is breasts. If there are no pleats, then the uniform blouse will drag the shoulders. Another thing is the length of the pants. If I need to kneel down quickly, the knee pads won’t sit on my knees at all due to men’s measurements. In addition to comfort, it’s also about dignity. It means that as a society we understand that the military is not just for men and by men. If we serve, we should serve equally. We should feel that women are not a secondary category, but that we are all equal to men.”

With Kuba and Karabin, during our farewell, a volunteer from Kyiv hands over a box with humanitarian aid. Several weeks of fundraising for tactical tourniquets paid off, and Kuba will take on dozens of new tourniquets. Photographic documentation of the handover will be made very quickly, because they are already calling Kuba from the stabilization point that within half an hour an evacuation unit will bring several seriously wounded soldiers from the battle.

Termination of drone operators

In an armored van, we arrive at a field a short distance outside the city, where the commander of the Black Raven company from the 93^rd Cholodny Yar brigade is waiting for us. A few minutes have passed since arriving at the site and the drone operators are already installing jammers, connections and other equipment for electronics. Several drones lie on a plastic folding table. Sitting on the fishing chairs are two young looking soldiers whom the others call nothing Bars and Doc. One of them has FPV drone pilot goggles on, the other is his technician. They use remote control to correct the drones in flight over the Donbas harvested field. Another young soldier nicknamed Tichyj is flying a drone nearby.

After a short flight warm-up, the unit will use the exercise to shoot a PR video and announce a new collection. As commander, Bars speaks for the entire unit, asking for contributions to anti-drone defense. The group of soldiers under the scorching sun is photographed on SLR cameras by the press department. As soon as Bars manages not to slur his sentences and the cameras turn off, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. We can then capture the three operators and have a short chat with them.

A funny story from the queue can be told with different intonation

We learn that Bars was supported by his work as a driving school instructor until the war, while Tichyj worked in agriculture and harvested grain in the Donetsk region. The banter that accompanied their photo exercise now blends into the beginning of our serious conversation. Doc, a former vet who volunteered a month after the full-scale invasion broke out, jokingly invites to join the ZSU: “I wish the boys would join the armed forces themselves. It’s not so scary here, it’s fun, it has its own vibe. A lot of guys think something terrible is going on here. But no. It’s not like that here.“But when we ask immediately if they have any funny stories from the war, Bars gets serious:”Truthfully, there’s not much that’s funny about war. But when I was still in the demining unit, we had one such case bordering on a funny story. We went on patrol and the guide of the group got a little lost. We went five hundred meters into the enemy’s rear. There were three others with me and they all spoke pure Ukrainian. Since Doc and I are both from Kharkiv, a city right next to the Russian border, we are used to speaking Russian. So, we walked past a couple of soldiers, greeted them in Russian, and at that moment we understood that we were in a place where we were not supposed to be. I prayed that none of my comrades would speak. We turned and left in peace. But only thanks to the fact that I know mostly Russian. There are actually a lot of situations when we find ourselves in enemy territory.“Doc picks up on the story and adds another:”We had another case when guys were going with groceries and also took a wrong turn. They walk up to some boys in a field fortifications and say in Russian: ’Look, boys, the commander told us to bring you these supplies, here they are.’ They were surprised because they had plenty of supplies. But after returning to the Ukrainian secondary position, other guys ask them where is the food they were supposed to bring. Only at that moment did they realize that they had previously entered an enemy trench. Some say that the language is decisive, but if the guys out here only spoke Ukrainian, maybe the whole thing would have turned out differently. So yes, it’s a funny story, I look back on it now with a smile, but it can also be told with different intonation and with different emotions."

Motivation to continue defending

After the fall of Avdijivka, even highly motivated soldiers admit that they feel tired and simply want to go home. Even now, the hard effort for mobilization of men of military age does not add to the number and length of rotations for those serving on the front lines.

“People generally forget that we are at war,” says Bars. "Yes, we are already psychologically scarred. The only things on my mind now are war and family, nothing more. It’s a great shame for us here to see how the cities far from the front have become so relaxed.” All three then nod that it’s hard to see videos of draft dodgers when you yourself are at the front. And they also met soldiers who, right from the start, assumed that they will die here.

At the same time, Doc adds conciliatoryly: “Not everyone has to go directly to the infantry.” An important context that is being forgotten is the fact that for one soldier in the infantry front line there are five people in the rear. Sure, it gets scary around here, but that’s life. I know cases where people want to be useful, but because of their health or mental state or even their beliefs, they cannot fight with a weapon in their hand. When I was in the infantry myself, I met guys with pumped up shoulders who you wouldn’t expect to admit thatthe first time they were shelled that they couldn’t handle it and wouldn’t last. They then work just a little further away, for example, with signalmen, transporting ammunition, working in supply or in the kitchen, and they are just as needed. People are missing everywhere, so brigades today already have websites where you can choose a position in advance, for example in the logistics department. I myself remember how I was in the Bakhmut tower blocks one door next to the enemy. I admit, not everyone can bear to hear them up close as they say: ’We have to shoot those ukrops (a derogatory term for Ukrainians, author’s note).’ But in short, you don’t have to be the one who will approach the enemy within two hundred meters. I have two tattoos on my hands. On the left I have written ’don’t despair’ and on the right ’everything will work out’. Basically, if you stick to these two slogans… Everything will be fine.”

After a moment, the two defenders fall silent, and Bars continues: “Really, everyone is afraid. Who wouldn’t be afraid of death or taking another’s life. But if it doesn’t work diplomatically, the only option is to stop the invasion like this. I want to stop and go home. Not just for a holiday from the front, but to take my family and travel the world.” And Doc adds: “I, on the other hand, so that I no longer associate ditches only with finding places to dig in and take cover from fire,” Bars laughs sympathetically and he nods, "Yes, to enjoy the view of nature again. However, we are still at work. It’s not time to rest yet.’ 

When asked whether they encounter incompetent orders from the so-called old school or the difficulties of a strongly vertical structure, which the army undoubtedly is, Doc answers clearly: “It’s a job like any other. When you work in a factory, you also have a superior who tells you what to do. I am speaking from my own experience and about the commanders I have experienced. As you can see, I am alive. And most importantly, the commander is one thing, but you also have your own head. If something is wrong, we are all responsible. But from personal experience, I can’t say I’ve witnessed any old school. After all, we are not in the army, but at war. Those are two different things.’

Lukáš Dobeš

Polina Davydenko

The authors are active at FFA BUT in Brno.

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