treated twenty-two soldiers wounded
by shelling. All had survived.
The other four Hospitallers in An-
astasia’s ambulance were old friends who
ran an N.G.O. called the Veteran Hub.
One of them, a former military psychol-
ogist code-named Artem, had co-
founded the organization, in 2018, to
provide counselling and employment
assistance for veterans of the Donbas.
Mamont, the ambulance’s rifleman, had
met Artem while seeking help himself,
after a Russian mortar left him with a
brain injury and a disabled right hand.
(He could still shoot with his left.) For
years, the vast majority of Ukrainians
had been insulated from the conflict
with Russia in the east; much of Artem
and Mamont’s work had focussed on
helping veterans re-integrate into a so-
ciety from which they’d come to feel es-
tranged. That would no longer be nec-
essary. Artem, foreseeing a nationwide
mental-health crisis, told me, “We’re
going to have a lot to do when this is
over.” The Veteran Hub had already
opened a psychological-support hotline,
available for traumatized civilians and
relatives of soldiers.
Outside the maternity hospital, there
was a statue of a stork, a bundled baby
dangling from its beak. An artillery shell
had lodged in the pavement; shrapnel
had pocked the hospital’s walls and shat-
tered its windows. The ranking Hospi-
taller was a fifty-two-year-old neuro-
surgeon code-named Yuzik. A grenade
in the Donbas had given him a limp.
He walked with a cane and wore a lan-
yard from which dangled a wooden cru-
cifix and a miniature handgun. Yuzik
showed us an examination room that
he’d converted into an emergency first-
aid station. In a lobby lined with pho-
tographs of infants, heart-shaped bal-
loons were still filled with helium; on
February 26th, when the Russians first
shelled Horenka, six women had given
birth in the basement.
During the three days that we stayed
at the maternity hospital, the Ukrai-
nians mounted a strenuous counter-offensive across the northern suburbs.
Armored vehicles raced up and down
the street, and Ukrainian artillery thun-
dered until dawn; in response, Russian
ordnance pounded our immediate sur-
roundings. One Russian rocket tore
through the tiled roof of a house ad-
jacent to the hospital. Others whistled
overhead or crashed into the ground
close enough to send even Mamont
running down the stairs.
Most civilians had left the area, but
not all. The first patients that Anasta-
sia’s team received were adult siblings,
a brother and sister, whose house had
been hit. The sister had been shelter-
ing in the cellar with her mother, and
had suffered only minor injuries; her
husband had been in the yard, and
was killed. Her brother, who’d also been
outside, was bleeding profusely from
multiple shrapnel wounds. He cried in
agony as Yuzik applied pressure ban-
dages to both of his legs, and another
medic gave him an I.V. with the opi-
oid tramadol.
The sister sat on an examination
table, waving off the medics who ap-
proached her. “I’m O.K.,” she said.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“What about Grandma?” Yuzik
asked.
“She’s fine—she was with me in the
basement. My husband was killed in-
stantly. If I’d been with him, I’d be dead,
too.” She recounted all of this with the
uncanny detachment of someone in
shock. Her husband’s body was buried
under debris. “I couldn’t move him,”
she said. As Yuzik wrapped a roll of
gauze around her ankle, her principal
emotion seemed to be embarrassment
at people fussing over her.
“You’re very tan,” Yuzik said, trying
to distract her.
The woman laughed. “I like the sun,”
she told him.
Anastasia helped load the siblings
into the ambulance and accompanied
them to the hospital. While she was
monitoring the brother’s vital signs, she
later told me, he became agitated, moan-
ing and writhing. The sister patiently
soothed him. “She was so calm,” An-
astasia said.
That night, an eighty-four-year-old
woman was delivered to the stabiliza-
tion point with shrapnel wounds to her
groin and abdomen. She did not cry“Why, Jameson! Does this mean that Musk character
will own all of my quips and retorts?”