There were very many medics on the Maidan. In its last days, 12 seriously wounded activists were saved at Kyiv Clinical Hospital No.18, the nearest to the Maidan. The hospital was guarded on a perimeter by First Sotnia self-defenders whom Babylon’13 cameramen Yaroslav Pilunsky and Yurii Hruzynov had filmed from the very beginning of clashes. On January 22, Hruzynov was one of the first to receive a gunshot wound on Hrushevskoho Street. He was rushed to a first-aid station on the Academy of Sciences premises. Doctors were trying to save Serhii Nigoyan at the time. Hruzynov was allowed to film. This resulted in The First Death, a Babylon’13 video short. We saw it later in the documentary film The First Death from the cycle “The Winter That Changed Us.”
Then another filmmaker, Iryna Tsilyk, who had been wiping blood off a Kyiv hospital floor, portrayed Olesia Zhukovska, a girl medic hit by a sniper’s bullet a centimeter from the carotid artery, in her film Red Marks on Black…
This article on “movies and medics” focuses on the following people: Vasyl Zhelman, chief doctor at Hospital No.18, Honored Doctor of Ukraine, assistant professor at Kyiv Medical University’s Surgery Department; Yurii Hruzynov, cameraman (after the Maidan, he and Yaroslav Pilunsky underwent torture in the Crimean SBU basements – the Babylon’13 cameramen arrived at the annexed peninsula to make a documentary and were kidnapped on March 16, the referendum day, right from the polling station); and Iryna Tsilyk, film director and writer, who came out on the Maidan in the very first days.
They will tell you about their own bits of “The Winter That Changed Us.”
VASYL ZHELMAN: “OUR HOSPITAL SAVED 12 SERIOUSLY WOUNDED PEOPLE IN TWO DAYS – FEBRUARY 19 AND 20”
“From the very beginning of the dramatic Maidan events, our hospital was fully alerted to provide care for the injured. Four wounded men were delivered in the morning of February 18. Three of them died from fatal injuries – one in the ambulance, the second in the surgery before the operation, and the third in the recovery room after the operation.
“The Maidan situation was inevitably bound to lead to mass-scale deliveries of the wounded in a limited period of time. This happened on February 20. The first wounded man was delivered at 9:30, the next two at 9:45, the next one at 9:55, another two at 10:00, then others at 10:20, 10:30, and 10:45. In other words, nine patients were brought in one hour and 15 minutes. Can you imagine what was going on here? Ambulances could not turn around and pass one another, so the wounded were taken out of the cars just at the entrance gate, placed on a stretcher, and run off to the reception room.
“There are only eight operating tables in the various wards of our hospital. We urgently converted the proctology ward’s dressing room into a ninth surgery. But each operation needed three surgeons.
“We immediately turned for help to our colleagues in other hospitals. Three surgeons ‘flew’ in a few minutes’ time from the National Institute of Cancer to operate on those wounded in the head and the neck. Three came from the Institute of Traumatic Surgery and one more from a cancer hospital.
“Some of our doctors of different specialties – dentists and gynecologists – were surgery assistants. We received immense help from Surgery Department No.1 of National Oleksandr Bohomolets Medical University.
“We thus managed to perform nine operations at the same time. Those were difficult operations which required transfusion of a lot of blood… The pharmacies that lease premises on the hospital’s territory also greatly helped us by supplying medicines. Almost all the operations were finished by midday. On the whole, our hospital saved 12 seriously wounded men in two days – February 19 and 20. Later on, volunteers organized further treatment for two of them abroad.
“Besides, 29, 34, or 37 people (estimates differ), who had minor injuries to the limbs and torso (for example, fragment wounds in the soft tissues) turned to us on their own on February 18, 19, and 20. Three of them had metal splinters pulled out.”
What do you mean by “estimates differ”?
“None of the injured gave their names or told about the way they received wounds. Nor did we record any of them, for they asked us not to do so. Some of them turned to us again later.”
Mr. Zhelman, Kyiv hospital surgeons did not have much experience, to put it mildly, of operating on gunshot-wounded patients. How come they managed to find their way so quickly? Especially in the case of sniper-inflicted wounds which are very special?
“If a surgeon is a professional, he will remain as such in all instances. The way of accessing the injured spot is the same in any operation. So are surgical techniques. Therefore, the surgeon who opens the abdominal cavity to remove the gall bladder will open it in the same way to remove a bullet from the liver. The surgeon who opens the skull to excise a tumor will open it likewise to pull out a bullet or a fragment. The vascular surgeon who performs operations on the neck’s vessels will penetrate likewise into the gunshot wound spot. The trauma surgeon knows how to penetrate into a splintered thigh and pull out the bullet.
“Speaking of wounds, differences lie in the cause of lesion, the course and the treatment of an illness. And here I’d like to say one thing. Our hospital specializes in abdominal, proctologic, and gynecologic surgery. The colleagues from other clinics, who had performed operations on the skull, went away, and our surgeons were then taking care of these patients. And, as a result, so many saved lives… So we can say proudly now that our hospital had a tremendous potential of helping both sick people and the wounded, although, of course, it’s better to be just ill.
“I must say the personnel’s mobilization drive was unbelievable for the chief doctor (laughs). I didn’t expect the staff to make so accurate, correct, and concerted efforts in those force-majeure circumstances – there was a colossal interaction! There was not a single reason for me to intervene and correct their actions. Of course, I advised them sometimes.”
Your staff and, above all, you as chief doctor took a great risk, admitting the Maidan wounded.
“Perhaps I did.”
Did the police ever raid you?
“No. Nobody came and nobody testified. Only a few policemen with minor injuries turned to us for help.”
Were they from riot police or the internal troops?
“I don’t know, for they wore civvies. But we also consider them patients who suffer. We, doctors, must provide care for everybody. And they must obey orders. So we mainly complain not about [rank-and-file] policemen but about their commanders. As we actively cooperated with volunteers, we asked those policemen: ‘Maybe, you need some help?’ They answered: ‘No, no, we are… from the other side.’
“Volunteers are a separate subject. They helped us a lot. They showered us with medicines. We set up a medicine warehouse in three rooms – and still it was filled to capacity. But there were no covering documents or certificates for them, and, under the law, we have no right to administer uncertified preparations.”
But in those days volunteers mostly supplied the medicines Kyivites had bought in drugstores.
“Do you think there can be no past-the-expiration-date medicines in a drugstore or a warehouse? But it was important for us at that period to save human lives, and we administered those medicines – otherwise, we would have just lost the wounded. Once the peak of patient intake had passed, we began to use certified medicines only. And I insisted that volunteers take back the uncertified remedies.”
Have any of the revolutionaries you saved come to visit their doctors in the past two years?
“They come, naturally. Perhaps not as often as we would like them to, but most of them are young people. They have suffered from serious wounds, rehabilitated, and now they are living a normal life, not an ordeal.”
YURII HRUZYNOV: “I FILMED THE ATTEMPT TO SAVE SERHII NIGOYAN AND HANDED THE MATERIAL OVER TO INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES”
“On January 22, like in the previous days, I filmed First Sotnia guys on the Maidan. Early in the morning they went to Hrushevskoho St. One of them had an eye injured with shot (I also filmed this), and he received help from Zhenia, a volunteer medic of the First Sotnia. Then the boys went back to Instytutska St., and I stayed behind to film.
“I noticed some incomprehensible activity near the first-aid station. I began to elbow my way there, but I was told that the press was barred from entry. They didn’t let me in, thinking that I was a journalist because I had a camera. Indeed, journalists were not allowed to come and film inside.
“I came over to the stadium’s columns, filming all that was going on along the barricade. I filmed heroes with tires and Molotov cocktails – I was eager to see their faces and understand who they were, why they were doing this, and what all this was about. I was to make a video report on that day’s face-off. The forward chain of the Berkut riot police was deployed near a citylight next to the colonnade. The citylight was glaring with bright white light that blinded the protesters’ faces. So I couldn’t see what was going on beyond it. At some moment I saw a rising gun barrel and filmed it. I came as closely as possible to the citylight and began to film them shooting. I could only see the barrel, not the faces. A barrel and a shot, a barrel and a shot… Then they showered us with gas grenades. We ran away together with the journalists – there were lots of them in front of the Lobanovsky monument.
“Then the boys brought a tire and threw into the blazing bus. When I stuck out of the self-defenders’ shields to film a tire catching fire, I felt a smarting pain and began to fall. At the same moment some boys, whom I had never seen before or after this, picked me up and carried to the colonnade. In spite of my resistance and attempts to convince them that I was all right (I was ‘shell-shocked’), they dragged me to the colonnade and began to ask me what had happened. I said where it hurt me and suddenly felt something warm trickling down my body – I understood that it was blood. Medics suddenly turned up from somewhere and carried me to the first-aid station. I began to realize on my way that I had been shot and wounded. I was now keenly aware of how one feels when he is wounded with a bullet.
“I received help from medics under the guidance of Yurii Ilkiv. He is a professional doctor who specializes, as does all of his team, in disaster medicine. When they set me on the table and I began to undress, a lot of metal shot pellets began to pour off me, as is I were a broken toy. I had received three, not just one, wounds, and one more pellet got stuck in the clothes. Some pellets scratched my palm and triceps, one went right through me, and one rebounded from the hand. They staunched the blood flow and began to treat the wound. While they were doing this, I looked away not to see the wound and saw Serhii Nigoyan. There were sparks flying off him – medics were trying to restore heartbeat with a defibrillator. They were doing their utmost to save him, but…
“Once they finished with me and the pain shock had passed, I asked Ilkiv permission to film. For some reason, I was the only one who could film in the first-aid station on that day. I filmed the attempts to save Nigoyan and Zhyznevsky. I handed the material over to international agencies, including Reuters, for the world to know that a peaceful protest in Ukraine began to grow into an open war of the government against its own people.”
You were one of the first to receive a gunshot wound on the Maidan and, accordingly, one of the first to receive the necessary care from medics. How would you characterize the work of the Maidan doctors on the basis of your own experience and of what you saw as a direct participant in the events?
“They were making a strikingly concerted effort, as was the whole Maidan whose self-organization was incredible. The Maidan saw the ‘broom effect,’ when one twig can be broken but the whole bunch cannot. The Maidan medics became our guardian angels. On January 22, the first-aid station at the Academy of Sciences worked like a precisely tuned mechanism. The only thing that distinguished the medics from those who worked on the street or at the Trades Union House was their very strained condition. They were the first to see all the horror of what was going on. For some of them, gunshot wounds were not a novelty – these doctors had taken part in military campaigns abroad. This also applies to Ilkiv (he also saw service in the ATO zone later). But the point is that they had previously been coming across this in wars only…
“The Maidan medics perhaps stood the closest to what the protesters were trying to build (and what ex-Maidan people are still trying to build) – a society of mutual trust and assistance, a society with new values. The Maidan medics… The bees and ants that carried the wounded on their shoulders, the fairies that would bring milk, lemons and water, and wipe the eyes of every victim whenever tear gas was spread and grenades were thrown… When it came to bullet wounds, they provided care right on the spot. I have a video that shows Zhenia administering a pain-killing injection into the eye of a wounded person. With the war raging around, this girl gives an injection into the lower eyelid at night when somebody is just shining a flashlight (!). This struck me so much that I understood: medics are even more valiant than we, protesters, for they knew only too well that they might be the first to be shot down. For even one living medic means dozens of saved Maidan activists. I can’t imagine how they managed to self-organize, set into motion this powerful and trouble-free mechanism, and coordinate their efforts. I will say frankly: this mass-scale appearance of medics on the Maidan had an astonishing effect on me. I had not even imagined that we have so many young medical professionals.”
Owing to your camera, some media made a journalist out of you and emphasized that you were the first of them to receive a gunshot wound…
“That’s right. There was also a cameraman who had his camera shot at. But for me personally, this is not the honor of being ‘the first one to be wounded’ but an indication of the conflict’s degree. It is after the first death – of Serhii Nigoyan – that a protest turned into a revolution.”
Did the police search for you after the media had reported that you were wounded?
“No. Well after the Maidan was over, my lawyer Yevhenia Zakrevska managed to give an impetus to the investigation. But when I saw the way the police are working, I understood that nothing had changed. Six months ago I was summoned to the prosecution office, where Yevhenia had forwarded my testimony to. She insisted on a crime-scene reenactment. We conducted it strictly by the rules: they asked me to fire a gun with a ramrod to find the shot’s direction, I showed from where I was fired at, and I told them who was exactly firing because I had filmed this… But the reenactment report and video film disappeared when those who conducted the experiment were passing them to a new investigator on duty (investigators are changed all the time). Then the investigator twice phoned me, but I said I would not come until the materials were found.”
IRYNA TSILYK AND YURII HRUZYNOV ON THE LOCATION OF IRYNA’S FILM HOME. THE CARPATHIANS, MARCH 10, 2016 / Photo courtesy of the author
IRYNA TSILYK: “WE WERE ALL DOING THE NEEDFUL IN SILENCE”
She has poured out her memories of February 20 in the short story Red Marks on Black. Not to make her say the same again, I just asked her permission to publish the following fragment.
“This date is February 20, 2014. No, it does not need to be explained to anybody. On that day, like on some of the previous ones, I performed the function of a gofer in the medical department to which the wounded were being brought in an incessant flow and hundreds of ordinary people flocked with medicines, blankets, bedclothes, broths, borschs, pies, and canned dietary clear soups carefully wrapped in towels and newspapers. The boys – broken, with violet bruises, and downcast after surgeries – lay in the wards, ashamed of their bodies and catheters, looking at the ceiling, refusing to eat and to believe. And the new wounded were being delivered over and over again. We all seemed to be in a fog, but we were doing the needful in silence – we were gathering the Kyivites’ gifts, sorting out foodstuffs and medicines, gratifying the fatigued surgeons as much as we could, handing out broths and clean socks in the wards…
“I understood something not when I saw that handsome one-legged guy: he and a not so young priest sat on a bed in the corridor (there were not enough room for everybody) and spoke quietly and peacefully about something of their own. And not even when this wounded girl medic was brought to the reception room on a wheel stretcher; I stood a meter away from her and ran my eyes in stupor over her jeans, a small backpack, a hood with a blood-stained fur rim, and the hair and neck tightly wrapped up with a wet scarf. (It became known later that a sniper’s bullet went a centimeter from the carotid artery, but the girl was saved. Unlike many, many others, Olesia miraculously survived.)
“I seemed to understand something when I was asked to wash the elevator. ‘Armed’ with a bucket, gloves, and a rag, I briskly rubbed the floor, sponging off a puddle of congealed blood, – I was to do this quickly, like everything on that day. It was somebody else’s blood which had belonged to someone just an hour before. It was warm, it flowed and pulsated. In the bucket, it gradually assumed a dirty red hue, while I squatted in a small hospital elevator, mechanically doing my work and not being afraid for the first time to touch these red marks on black with my hands…”
