One afternoon in Kyiv, an intimate outdoor concert has gathered an excitable crowd. Some of Ukraine’s most popular artists – including Oleksandr Ponomaryov and Alyosha, two former Eurovision Song Contest finalists – are about to perform.
The stage is not swamped by
screaming teenage fans, however. Instead, the front row is reserved for
wounded, wheelchair-ridden soldiers, casualties of Ukraine’s war of
independence.
Here, at a special event in
Kyiv’s military hospital, they are the celebrities. Paper hearts hang from
trees surrounding the small square in the heart of the closed-off compound,
bearing words of gratitude for the war heroes from ordinary Ukrainians. Each
artist climbs off the stage after performing to hand a bouquet of flowers to
the honorary guests.
“This is the least we can
do to show our gratitude to these men, to alert society to what they have done
for us,” says Maxim Radetskyi, the concert’s organizer. “We plan to organize more
such events for them in the future, all across Ukraine.”
With the help of social
media, Radetskyi brought together a team of volunteers to help organize the
concert. People helped in any way they could, he says. A local restaurant chain
provided food free of charge, and its employees along with all other workers on
the site – from security guards at the hospital entrance to the ground’s
cleaners – had agreed to work at the event for free.
The goodwill has not gone
unnoticed by the injured soldiers. Eduard Solovor, 25, says that the emotional
support he and his comrades have received while fighting Russian-backed
separatists in eastern Ukraine has been crucial in upholding morale.
“We gathered great strength
from the Ukrainian people, from those who believe in us and inspire us. We
can’t win without that support. Ukraine was divided before this crisis, but now
the people have really come together,” he says.
Solovor came under heavy
gunfire during fighting outside the city of Luhansk on June 27. One bullet
hit his mobile phone, which was in the right pocket of his trousers.
Disintegrating upon impact, it embedded thousands of fragments in his right
leg. The doctor was forced to amputate. He told Solovor he had never seen
anything like it in his 33 years of experience as a military surgeon.
Standing at Solovor’s side
is his wife, Alina. She takes the Kyiv Post aside and reveals that her husband
had suffered an injury to his heel several years ago, which had restricted the
movement in his right leg and could have exempted him from military service. He
chose to fight anyway. “Thank God he lost his bad leg,” she says.
According to Lev Holik, the
hospital’s deputy director, 127 soldiers wounded in the government’s campaign
to recapture Ukraine’s eastern regions are currently being treated at the
facility. The turnover is high, however, with patients discharged daily and
others arriving to take their place. On a day of particularly heavy losses the
hospital received 150 soldiers, Holik says, adding that a team of psychologists
works round the clock with the men.
The hospital’s head
surgeon, who asked to withhold his name as he was not authorized to speak with
reporters, says the soldiers suffer from a range of injuries. Many have been
left without limbs as a result of indiscriminate shelling by both sides in the
course of the three-month conflict.
The enterprising spirit
behind the concert’s organization extends to the general work of the hospital.
Holik says medicines worth over Hr 5 million ($427 million) have been donated
to the facility since the military conflict began.
A large part of that
assistance has been secured by the Volunteer Hundred, an offshoot of the
EuroMaidan movement named after the “Heavenly Hundred,” the popular term
applied to activists killed by police forces during mass protests in Kyiv last
winter. The organization now works at military hospitals across the country to
improve soldiers’ conditions, raising public awareness and money through its
Facebook page.
One of its volunteers,
29-year-old Valeriya Kislukhina, says she gave up her previous job as a
financial officer at an electronics company to take charge of accounting at the
Volunteer Hundred station in Kyiv’s military hospital. Every day people arrive
at the facility in their cars, bringing bed sheets, medicine, food and even
used kettles and wheel-chairs. One person recently bought several iPads for the
soldiers, she says.
Living conditions at the
hospital are good, with each ward equipped with a TV and all necessary
amenities. The walls are plastered with cute pictures drawn by children,
complete with messages wishing the men a speedy recovery. Outside the main
accommodation block, 23-year-old Anatoliy Tutumnyk entertains passers-by as his
sister leans on the back of his wheelchair and laughs.
The Dnipropetrovsk native
is a real personality, and something of a celebrity at the hospital. He joined
the army in 2008 as a 17-year-old fresh out of high school, and was initially
based in Sevastopol, the second city on the Crimean peninsula which was annexed
by Russia in March. In 2011 he left and joined the reserves, signing up to
fight as soon as the conflict in Ukraine’s east began. On his chest he proudly
displays a “Glory and Honor” medal, awarded to him by the Ukrainian Armed
Forces.
He gives an enigmatic
response when asked to recount his story. “All of us have the same story. There
is no individualism here,” he says, referring to Ukrainians fighting the war
against the insurgents in the country’s east.
Tutumnyk’s brigade was
ambushed on June 19 during an offensive against separatist positions
near the town of Krasny Lyman. The unit retreated and subsequently staged a
second advance. An intense gunfight broke out, and Tutumnyk was struck by
several bullets. One went through his passport and military documents, which he
kept in the pocket of his uniform.
The 23-year-old is making a
steady recovery, and is now able to walk on one leg. The other, which he keeps
propped up, remains in a cast. As he speaks, his gaze is slightly offset:
shrapnel from a mortar has embedded itself in his right eye, leaving it a deep
red.
Despite his injuries,
Tutumnyk is desperate to return to the front and join his comrades. “I’d go
right now if they let me,” he says, raising himself up in his wheelchair as if
preparing to leave. His sister, who drove to Kyiv as soon as she heard news
that he had been transferred to the capital for treatment and now spends every
day with him, says he repeats this every day.
Most of the soldiers at the
hospital stay in touch with members of their unit on a daily basis, and all
agree that the war in eastern Ukraine has reached a new level. Army forces
fighting to secure the border are now being fired at from both sides, they say,
from areas controlled by Russian-backed separatists as well as from Russia
itself.
“It’s a hopeless situation.
We can target rebel positions, but we can’t fire back at Russia, even though
they fire at us. If we did, a real war would break out,” says 29-year-old Sasha
Shvetsov.
Kyiv Post staff writer Matthew Luxmoore can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @mjluxmoore.
