the times | Saturday April 9 2022 13
News
A 43-year-old man
told an undercover
reporter posing as
“Natalya”, a refugee
from Ukraine, that he
would not sponsor a
person who was
unwilling to have sex,
while other men sent
messages that raised
fears that Ukrainians
using the scheme
were at risk of being
sexually exploitedinstruments between
operations.”
After more than 40 days,
he says, they are still not inured
to the horrendous injuries they are
witnessing nor the amputations they
perform. “The long-term effects will
be horrific. None of us are sleeping
properly, we stay inside all the time,
we can’t see grass or trees. We don’t
have a problem with food here like
they do in other cities, but the war
started at the same time in 11 cities
and we just weren’t ready for another
crisis after Covid in all the hospitals.”
The dedication of staff, he says, has
been extraordinary. “We are learning
fast but we don’t have all the
equipment, not even all the
instruments we need for open
surgery.” Their initial problem was the
power cuts. “The electricity kept
switching off, plunging us into
darkness when we were in the middle
of complex operations, turning off the
monitoring machines.”
So Yatsyna turned to the doctors he
had worked with in Sheffield and
London while on a scholarship
programme in the UK a few years
ago. “I loved your cities — the
nightlife and clubs in Liverpool and
Sheffield, the Royal Opera House in
London, pints in the Cavendish pub in
Marylebone, afternoon tea and
scones at your National Trust houses
in the beautiful English countryside.
Everyone was so hospitable, I knew
you would help.”I
n London, he had met Dr Sara
McNeillis, a consultant at
University College London. The
two doctors became friends and
McNeillis even visited Yatsyna in
Ukraine last year. She had contacted
him at the beginning of the war,
asking: “What can we do to help?”
When Yatsyna tentatively asked
whether she could try to find him a
generator, she didn’t hesitate. Soon,
with three other London-based
consultants, she had sourced a
generator which Yatsyna collected at
the Polish border. Now staff have
raised funds for a portable ultrasound
machine. “They will be vital in saving
lives by helping us ascertain internal
bleeding from rocket attacks and
bombs,” Yatsyna explains. “I don’t
want to sound greedy but we need
more.” Next on his list are bulletproof
vehicles so they can send out teams
to the red zones where the fighting
has been most intense, and treat and
rescue the injured. “People were
coming here in wheelbarrows orOleksandr Yatsyna
says hospitals need
equipment urgentlyO
leksandr Yatsyna tries to
maintain his composure
as he waits to go into the
operating theatre in Kyiv.
A vein in his temple is
throbbing but he maintains his
composure. “First we had the
catastrophic injuries from the bombs,
then the shooting, next the mines
scattered along the roads but worst of
all are the stuffed toys filled with
explosives. They are targeting
families. Be in no doubt, the Russians
are determined to kill our civilians
and children too.”
The partly British-trained surgeon
is at the forefront of Ukraine’s
medical response to President Putin’s
invasion. Yatsyna, 39, sleeps and eats
in the hospital to remain near his
patients, listening to their horror
stories each night on his rounds and
absorbing their trauma.
“The Russians want to make the
situation as unstable for us as
possible, economically and mentally,
to twist our minds,” he explains,
flinching only momentarily when a
siren starts blaring. “They want to
terrify us with their barbarity but they
don’t understand the more they try to
frighten the people the braver they
become. The stories I hear will haunt
me for ever.”
A urologist by training, Yatsyna has
had to learn fast. Even A&E traffic
accidents couldn’t prepare him for the
carnage he has witnessed. He cannot
divulge his hospital in Kyiv in case it
is targeted. “When they hit the
maternity facility in Mariupol I
couldn’t believe it, that was my
turning point. Now I know they will
attack any of us. Doctors and
vulnerable patients, unable to flee, are
prime targets.”
Most of his colleagues, he says,
have insisted on remaining to help;
others have returned from working in
hospitals abroad. “A few doctors went
to fight, many sent their young
children to safety and stayed on,
including the cleaners, porters, chefs
and nurses. We have enough
volunteers. The shifts now are three
or four days long. Many don’t go
home as their flats have been
destroyed or they have no transport
and it is too dangerous to walk or
cycle to work.”
When the first missiles exploded in
Kyiv, the staff moved everyone down
to the basement. “Now we have a
tolerance for this. The anti-missile
system is working, we believe in our
army as they are achieving results
and we have slowly started coming
back to the ground floor. We cannot
live like rats underground for ever.”
The first few weeks of war, he says,
went by in a blur. “It was horrendous.
I can’t distinguish between the
operations, bodies after bodies. When
it is an entire family you are trying to
save, that is the worst: sisters,
brothers, grandparents. [The
Russians] must have been given
orders to do this, they can’t mistake
these children for soldiers. There are
so many violations we have seen as
doctors. We hardly had time to drink
a cup of coffee or sterilise theNews
‘The Russians booby-trap
teddies to kill children’
slung over shoulders, many more are
unable to move and must be in great
pain. We would love to buy some old
second-hand Land Rovers or maybe
those armoured bank security vans
you have.”
The city has emptied. “There are
three times fewer people in Kyiv now.
Those who remain are brave, they
know what to do, they are now stress-
tolerant, they are not hysterical. They
only come to the hospital if they are
badly injured but now is the
time to reach out to
those who can’t get
here without help.”
Most of the
children in his
hospital have
slowly been
evacuated, along
with those
receiving cancer
treatment before
the war. “They
were so stoic, no one
complained.” The
pandemic doesn’t register
in conversations now. “We
used to be Covid-obsessed, the talk
was all of vaccine certificates and
masks, but that hasn’t survived the
bombing. Now people barely notice if
they have it.”
People talk of the Russian thieves
and looters while they wait for their
operations. “The Russian soldiers take
everything from the buildings they
destroy, stepping over the bodies. The
stories are awful: coffee machines,
furniture, computers.”
Yatsyna says he is lucky. “They
have only destroyed the windows of
my flat.” He married his wife only in
August. “She left after two weeks of
bombings to Lviv. She is a
gynaecologist and is helping at the
borders with the refugees: the
newborn babies and pregnant
mothers. I saw her when I went to
collect the generator.”
At their wedding, he says, they
entertained ten Russian friends from
Moscow. “But they have been
brainwashed now. They message me
saying, ‘We will save you from
nationalism, from the Nazis’. At the
beginning, I replied, now I don’t read
them. I think it will be hard for
Russians and Ukrainians to mix after
this for a long time.”
Of course, his hospital would treat
Russian soldiers, he says. “It’s my
profession to do this. But if we treat
them and they come back to fight us
again that will be terrible.”
He refuses to arm himself. “I don’t
want to fight. I am a doctor, I save
lives. But I would protect my home if
necessary.” He reminds me of Boris
Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago when he
starts to talk about his love of
Ukrainian literature and landscape.
“In my home I loved the spring, the
flowers opening, the trees unfurling, I
adored my trees. I don’t understand
how they can destroy it all,” he says.
Nurses keep interrupting our
conversation with urgent questions. “I
am sorry,” he says, “I have to go. Our
country, our people, our hospitals and
doctors were not ready for this. We
have already suffered the pandemic
and now a war that is beyond
anyone’s imagination in the 21st
century. I desperately hope it never
happens to you but it is now
happening in Europe, on your
doorstep.”
To donate visit gofundme.com/f/UK-
doctors-supplying-Ukraine-with-
medical-kitA surgeon in Kyiv
gives Alice Thomson
a harrowing insight
into what hospital staff
in the city are facing
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