Nobody knew what kind of explosion it was, but it was massive. Nobody expected any soldier caught up in the frontline blast to have survived.
But on May 10, early in the afternoon, eight paratroopers from Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade were transported in several ambulances to a village not far from the Donbas line of contact.
Orderlies unloaded the vehicles and helped the soldiers into the Brigade’s Casualty Reception Center. Some had difficulty walking, a couple needed stretchers, and most had that distant, stunned look as if emerging from a terrible and disorienting car accident.
For the nurses attending to them, this was a mass casualty event, with the paratroopers experiencing severe concussion. They loosened belts, removed shirts, cleaned dirt, performed head to toe inspections for external injuries, examined for internal complications, attached intravenous drips and probed ear canals for damage. One man was shivering so the nurses covered him up. Another was shaking in pain and had trouble breathing so they administered electrocardiography.
Nurse Olena Saprykina’s job is to look after troops on the frontline who suffer serious injury. At 20 years old, she is the junior member of a three-nurse team backed by two doctors.
As Saprykina and her colleagues worked, they talked back and forth to each other like a well-practiced basketball team: “That man has already received painkillers…this man needs his right leg and foot re-checked for possible fractures… make sure we note that guy’s blood type, we’re going to need to pull out more saline to be ready for the next wave of casualties,” etc.
The 25th Airborne has been on the frontline and fighting since the (renewed) Russian invasion on Feb. 24, and the Casualty Reception Center has been operating 24/7 since then. The fighting has been constant and, even now, more than two months into the war, medical staff work when necessary and rest when possible.
Saprykina told the Kyiv Post that she has not yet had a day off nor requested one. She has only managed to grab an hour or two to visit the shelled and mostly deserted town near the Casualty Reception Center a couple of times. Otherwise, she lives on site and gets on with the job at hand.
Aside from the wounded soldiers, her co-workers, the rare volunteer team and even rarer reporter, Saprykina has spoken with no-one.
Nurse Olena Saprykina taking information from a wounded soldier while other medical workers treat a group of men with severe concussions as a result of Russian artillery at the 25th Airbourne Brigade’s Casualty Reception Center, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, May 10, 2022. (Christopher Occhicone/Redux)
“Yes,” she says, “I get a little tired sometimes.” She concedes that the staff there are very supportive but that it’s not always easy being a young woman with relatively little life experience, serving in one of Ukraine’s most elite combat units.
We ask her if she has ever felt harassed or excluded. “Absolutely not,” she says, pointing out that, in her view, a woman volunteering for a combat unit like the 25th Airborne should be intelligent enough to understand what she’s getting herself into.
Saprykina makes it clear that the job she signed up for is to help the wounded at all times, to do so professionally, to get them back to the fight and – more importantly – to give them a chance to return safely to their families.
The 25th Airborne Brigade is a professional fighting organization, with high standards for everyone. The nursing team’s day-to-day work involves giving injured soldiers professional care, and for as long as the Russians are trying to kill the Ukrainian military personnel, staff at the Casualty Reception Center must be ready to do their job at all times, without exceptions or excuses.
“Whether or not the work is gruelling, or if it’s a man or woman doing the work, is irrelevant,”, Saprykina explains. She tells us that she could theoretically put in for leave but hasn’t.
Saprykina is a four-year medical student and a trained nurse, having gone directly into the military after graduating. All being well, she plans to study to become a pharmacist or a doctor after the war.
She has no immediate plans of settling down and starting a family because, for now, she wants to concentrate on her career. “For the foreseeable future,” she says, “that means more wounded soldiers, without a break.”
Saprykina had been busy treating the wounded before she sat down to speak with the Kyiv Post. As the interview ends, she’s back on her feet, reviewing patient data before transferring the soldiers for further recovery.
