As 15-year-old Lisa Chernichenko pressed the gas pedal as she frantically drove through the Donetsk region, she realized she had been shot in both legs, but with four others in the car, including two men bleeding profusely, she continued to drive, even while Russian forces continued firing
“There was no fear, no shock,” Chernichenko told the CBC from her hospital bed in Lviv.
“It simply came to our notice then.
Chernichenko, who was planning to hide with her godmother and try to wait for the ruthless barrage near her Komishuha community, eventually escaped after two men were injured in an attack and needed someone to take them to the hospital.
Her dramatic escape on May 1 came as Russian forces stepped up their attack on Ukraine’s eastern Donbass, where they seek to seize most of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with full control of Mariupol, where an unspecified number of Ukrainian fighters remain. Azovstal steel plant.
On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities confirmed that all women, children and the elderly had been evacuated from extensive Soviet-era steelmaking, while other residents of besieged areas in eastern Ukraine continued to make grueling journeys west of the immediate military zone.
An unidentified woman was seen walking near her damaged home in Bakhmut, in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, on Saturday after a rocket strike killed at least three people. (Reuters)
Rescue mission
Chernichenko told the CBC that after hearing the shelling, she rode her bicycle from her home to the location of two men wounded by shrapnel wounds.
In the turmoil, she decided that the men should go to the hospital in Bakhmut, a community about an hour away by car. One of the wounded men had a car that could take them there, but given the fierce fighting nearby, no one wanted to drive.
So Chernichenko took the wheel.
The two victims got into the car with one of their wives and another man who offered to help with navigation.
Drive to avoid mines
She says that on the way out of the village they passed under a bridge and she saw mines a few hundred meters in front of her, sitting like “chess pieces”, through which she had to pass.
Up the road, a pillar split in two, and next to one of the halves lay a woman’s body.
Chernichenko, who already knew how to drive, said that when she turned the corner, she and her passengers were suddenly shelled by Russian forces.
She was hit, and so was the car. Its engine stopped shortly before restarting.
As her legs were bleeding and pain was radiating through her legs, she was relieved when, 20 minutes after the trip, they encountered Ukrainian troops, who took control and took everyone to the hospital.
Chernichenko was hit by at least four bullets and her baby toe was blown off.
Dr Halina Hachkevich, head of the trauma department at St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital in Lviv, says that in addition to treating children wounded in the war, medical staff are helping to deal with the trauma and insecurity. Some of the children have lost a parent or relatives in the fighting and are unsure where they will live after discharge. (Brier Stewart / CBC)
As she retells the story from her hospital bed, she is confident and speaks confidently that she had no choice but to act.
At 15, she projects the image of a man who has spent years caring for himself.
But when a doctor comes to tell her that she needs to change her bandages, she shouts that she doesn’t want to go.
When she is taken to another room, her screams are heard in the hospital corridor.
“It’s awful,” said Dr. Halina Hachkevich, head of the trauma department at St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital in Lviv.
“Seeing the grief of the people.”
Chernichenko shared a room with a girl who was trying to escape from Kramatorsk on April 8th with her mother when a rocket struck, killing at least 59 people.
The girl was injured in the explosion and her mother was killed.
Hachkevich says her team sees about 12 pediatric patients from the war zone each week. The youngest they saw was only nine months old.
Foreign doctors from the United States and Italy have arrived in Lviv to help with operations, but in frontline communities, doctors and those without medical education are struggling to provide care while their hospital buildings are attacked.
Hospital under siege
Before the war, 35-year-old Konstantin Sokolov worked at the Azovstal steel plant, where he helped manage equipment supplies, but on February 24, when Russian forces invaded the country, he moved to the maternity hospital in Mariupol, where his mother works as a doctor. .
He spent nearly two months there before he and his parents fled.
The hospital was attacked several times. Sokolov, who has no medical education, worked to provide diesel fuel for generators, carried people on stretchers and raised lights so doctors could perform surgeries and give birth to babies.
When another maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed on March 9th, Sokolov said a large number of patients had arrived in need of help.
He and his parents wanted to stay in Mariupol as long as they could, but were warned by Russian forces, who now control the port city, that they must leave.
“The tactical team told us to evacuate, otherwise we would be executed,” he told the CBC as he parked in a long queue for petrol in Lviv, where he had arrived a week ago.
Konstantin Sokolov is waiting in line for fuel in Lviv on May 7. He escaped from Mariupol, where he has been staying and helping a maternity hospital since the beginning of the invasion. (Brier Stewart / CBC)
When they left Mariupol on April 19, he said their car had been shelled.
“Thank God they don’t have a very well-aimed sniper,” he joked.
Filtration bearing
They passed through a series of Russian-controlled checkpoints and a so-called filtration camp, where his phone was searched and he was asked if he had links with the Ukrainian military or the country’s security services.
He was there for about four hours, which he said was significantly less than most men his age, because he was traveling with his mother, who was a doctor.
Once his parents settle down, he hopes to return to eastern Ukraine, where he says he will join the battle.
At the hospital in Lviv, Chernichenko is not sure what lies ahead.
Although she may travel a short distance on crutches, it will be days, if not weeks, before she is discharged from the hospital, and she knows it will be too dangerous to return to her village in Donetsk.
Her best option now, she says, is to contact a nurse she met on the train to Lviv, who gave Chernichenko a number and offered to help take care of her when she left the hospital.
“War is the worst thing that can happen in this life,” she said.
“There is no point in blaming anyone. You can only blame one person and that’s it [Russia’s] President”.
Crater left by impact in front of Maternity Hospital №2 in Mariupol. Konstantin Sokolov told the CBC that he remained in hospital between February 24 and April 19, where he helped the medical team, including his mother, take care of patients. (Konstantin Sokolov / Sent)
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