“I do nothing else in my life now. I don't see my children, who have been evacuated, I don't see my wife, who has been evacuated, I live by myself, and all I do is treat the wounded.”
's capital, Petro Nikitin has his hands deep in a war churning hundreds of kilometers away. The 59-year-old doctor's work to repair the bodies of some of the most badly injured soldiers is all-consuming.
Fighting has been particularly fierce in recent weeks around the eastern city of Bakhmut, scene of the war's longest and bloodiest battle, where Ukrainian forces have recently clawed back more territory from Russian forces. Gunshot wounds turned out to be rare. “I don’t even remember the last time I extracted a bullet,” the surgeon said. But during the long days and months, he has become familiar with a range of traumatic injuries: explosive weapons such as landmines, artillery shells and grenades frequently harm many parts of the body at the same time.
“We don’t do first aid here. We don’t save lives. That's done by the medics,” he said. “What we try to do is return these people to a normal life.” Nikitin typically gets to the hospital at 7:45 a.m. and stays until the work is done, sometimes not leaving until about 11 p.m. His wife and children fled Ukraine in March 2022 as Russian forces closed in on Kyiv. He accompanied his family to the border, but then returned to the city.
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