‘Maybe I’m bonkers, but I have a calling’: Ukraine’s medics on frontline

When Russia launched its invasion in 2022, Roman Vozniak gave up his old life. A civilian doctor, he joined Ukraine’s national guard. “I decided to become a combat medic. I told my wife I’d be home in two months,” he said. Two years later, Vozniak is still working on the frontline, treating wounded soldiers. “Your job is to stop people dying. It’s simple. If someone doesn’t make it, you move on. You have to act quickly”.

Vozniak is based in Sviatohirsk, a picturesque city in the eastern Donetsk region. Once, tourists would visit its turquoise-domed 16th-century monastery, built at the bottom of a steep chalk hill, and relax in beach cafes along the willow-lined Siverskyi Donets River. In May 2022, Russian forces arrived. They occupied Sviatohirsk for four months. By the time they left, pushed out after a battle, houses and sanatoriums had been destroyed.

“There was a beautiful pine forest where you could collect mushrooms. Now it’s a place of death,” Vozniak reflected. The Russians mined the cemetery and woodland nature trails. Fighting continues nearby in the Serebryansky forest. After countless enemy attacks, swaths of trees have burned down. Instead of greenery, there are blackened trunks. Russian airstrikes and artillery pound Ukrainian positions, and trenches criss-cross the sandy earth.

Vozniak and his medical colleagues evacuate the wounded in customised vehicles. They included buggies – more manoeuvrable in forest conditions – and armoured ambulances. A charity, Razom for Ukraine, donates them. “For the first two months it was chaos. Things are calmer now,” said Illya Sakhno, a paramedic, as Ukrainian guns thumped away in the distance. A patch on his uniform said: “The louder you cry, the faster we will get to you.” Another read: “Ukraine or death”.

A member of the team, 29-year-old nurse Inna Mahomedova, said she had given up her job as a seamstress to help wounded soldiers. She retrained. Was her work hard? “Of course you have emotions. Sometimes it’s terrible. Your soul hurts. I want to be useful,” she said. During breaks, she relaxed by watching horror movies. “It may sound strange, but they switch me off,” she said. “I know they are made up and that noth

Vitalii Harnik treats a soldier, Andrii, at a hospital in the Donetsk region. Andrii was concussed when a Russian drone dropped a bomb into his foxhole. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/ The Guardian

Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian Roman Vozniak outside Sviatohirsk. ‘Your job is to stop people dying,’ he says.