A young Ukrainian woman was recuperating after the birth of her twins in one of Kyiv’s main maternity hospitals when shrapnel ripped through a window, littering her bedroom floor with shattered glass.
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The next day, after spending the night in a bunker, the women and newborns were evacuated and the clinic turned into a field medical post for wounded soldiers and civilians.
Thursday, while the whole world remained shocked by the bombardment the day before by the Russian army of another maternity hospital in the southern port of Mariupol, the director of the site in Kyiv wanted to send a message to Western leaders.
Valeriy Zukin is a world renowned maternal health expert and CEO of a private clinic in a suburb of the capital. Now he runs emergency care for war wounded.
AFP
He does not want to hear about humanitarian aid from the West: what he wants is political and military support for Ukraine, so that it can overcome the Russian invasion.
“I get a lot of questions from abroad like ‘what kind of humanitarian aid do you need?’ I prefer to buy medicine and not ask for alms,” he told AFP.
“It’s like asking a man with a noose around his neck if he’s thirsty. First remove the noose,” he continues.
Mr Zukin’s clinic, located near the frontline village of Horenka, northwest of Kyiv, did not suffer the same level of destruction as the Mariupol maternity hospital, whose shelling on Wednesday raised outrage the international community.
But the glass entrance door was shattered by shards and two impacts disfigure its facade.
AFP
Women and children were sent home or distributed to other establishments further away from the fighting.
But the clinic remains open. A khaki military ambulance studded with shrapnel is parked there, just behind a statue of a stork bringing a baby.
In the surrounding woods, the dull sound of artillery and mortars echoes. The Russian forces are now only a few kilometers away.
Vasyl Oksak, 43, is the local civil defense commander. He is in charge of transporting the wounded to the clinic.
“There was heavy fighting six kilometers from here,” he told AFP.
“Our soldiers are there, repelling the enemy. The evacuation of civilians from parts of the village where there is no fighting is underway,” he explains.
AFP
Several houses in this area, which mainly includes modest individual houses with gardens, were hit by Grad missiles, fired by multiple rocket launchers.
One of them was set on fire and deprived of a roof, and the adjoining plastic greenhouse was destroyed by the impacts, revealing young shoots of crocuses in the winter cold.
Many houses are deserted and stray dogs and cats among the broken glass beg passers-by for food. Chickens roam the debris-covered gardens, whose twisted fences flap in the wind.
“The shell hit this wall where there was a gas pipe,” explains Vasyl Oksak, having the ruins inspected. “Here is a child’s chair, shoes,” he continues. “You see, it was a child’s room, they lived here”.
A local pensioner, Nataliya Mykolaivna, 64, shows a sprayed white minibus, which she says belonged to volunteers who carried supplies to the soldiers at the front and to the inhabitants still on the spot.
“They came here and stopped their minibus. They had boxes of candy,” she says.
“We approached, five or six people. They were going to hand us the boxes. And suddenly they were targeted. It was a direct hit.”
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca