Victims of war in Ukraine have laid bare the conflict’s devastating toll as we visited frontline city hospitals – nearly three years on from Russia ’s full-scale invasion.
The Mirror had exclusive access to where brave medics tend to the wounded in Zaporizhzhia, barely 25 miles from fighting. Those providing care include Brits risking their lives to toil in the warzone on charity deployments in the region partly occupied by Vladimir Putin ’s forces.
A British nurse shed light on the traumatic injuries she treats, telling us of the stricken patients: “It’s a husband or someone’s son. So it touches me so much, thinking what can we do? So by fixing the bone I feel as if we can give him a bit of life…”
Our visit to the war-torn country comes as Monday marks three years since Russian troops launched a full-on invasion of Ukraine – capturing vast swathes of land. The US has been a major funder of Ukraine’s defence but Donald Trump ’s arrival in the White House has flipped Washington’s stance.
The US President revealed earlier this month peace talks were starting with Russia – later falsely branding Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator”. In Zaporizhzhia, the Mirror bore witness to the great cost of conflict on ordinary people.
At one hospital we saw a wounded security worker injured in an attack last month on a day when 13 were left dead in the city and over 100 wounded. And we spoke to a jewellery maker severely hurt days earlier in a blast – striking when he stopped for a cigarette.
At another hospital in the city, a factory worker told how his leg was amputated after being hurt in an attack in Mariupol – a city which fell to the Kremlin in mid-2022 after being besieged. Meanwhile, a 23-year-old Ukrainian nurse, whose boyfriend is in the military, spoke movingly about fleeing occupied territory.
Grandfather Vasil Hubka was wounded on January 8 in an attack on the city. Speaking from his hospital bed, Vasil recalled the horror as it unfolded at the factory where he works in security. “I was injured after the first bomb,” the married 59-year-old explained.
“In the first second, I didn’t understand what happened. Then I sat down and saw my leg twisted the other way. My leg was being held together only by the muscles… I took my belt and tried to help myself [apparently as a tourniquet].” He told how his leg was bleeding “a lot”.
Vasil urged our translator to impress the point: “Please translate, it was holding on only by the muscles.” He added: “I just just didn’t understand anything. A half of a second and everything was flying and falling around. Pipes, slabs, bricks. I can’t even say what exactly injured my leg.”
A second attack hit, with Vasil – who has two daughters and a grandson – explaining: “A woman sat near me and leaned over me and closed me off from the second blast. Then our guards came, took the door [to use as a stretcher] and carried me out to the traffic lights. It was me and another man… and then a police car came because it was hard for an ambulance to come closer.”
Vasil suffered two broken bones in his leg. “I don’t have 7cm of bone at all,” he said. He has already had five operations — there will be more. “The doctors are fighting to save my leg.” His wife visits everyday, he said, adding: “The most important thing is to keep spirits up, believe in better.”
Along the hallway in another room, Ruslan Tenniukh was laid up in bed – his leg in bad shape too. The married 51-year-old jewellery maker stopped for a cigarette on his way back from work – and nearly lost his life. A guided aerial bomb hit just 20 metres from him. He told us of the moment on January 6: “I remember just a flash, that’s all. Then I woke up here in hospital.”
Ruslan suffered a fracture from shrapnel. “I lost a piece of muscle,” the dad, who has a 17-year-old son, explained. “The shrapnel went in 7cm deep and I had a shattered bone. I also had shards in my back and other leg.”
Recovery has been a long road; he has had four operations and is due to have a fifth. A keen fisherman who wants to get back to his hobby, he hopes to walk by the New Year. Ruslan’s colleague was also injured in the attack, with a piece of shrapnel blowing off his nose.
Asked what the last three years have been like, he said: “How can I tell you? War is always a bad thing. I wish it would end as soon as possible. You see the devastation, it’s wrecking our country.”
At the second hospital, Oleksandr Khaladzhi is learning to walk again. The widower had to have his leg amputated after being hurt in an attack in Mariupol five days into the war in 2022 before the city was captured by Russia. Sitting in his wheelchair, the 46-year-old recalled: “I went to the grocery shop and then the attack started. It injured both my legs above the knee.”
He was in hospital in Mariupol for six months — at the end of which one of his legs was amputated. “When I got injured I was in delirium for a month or a month and a half,” he said. “I had no idea what was happening…” Before the war Oleksandr – who worked in an alcohol factory – said life was happy.
We met him midway through a four-week rehabilitation stint in the hospital where he showed us his prosthetic leg. Asked how it feels to walk again, he said: “It works fine but I have a rod and my knee hurts. And still I try and it’s working.”
“I began to look at life differently and appreciate it,” he said. “I want to learn how to walk as soon as possible.” British nurse Nyarai Makona is more used to seeing patients who have fallen off ladders or been in road accidents. Yet work is rather different during a ten-week stint at the hospital with UK-Med, a British charity helping provide healthcare for victims of conflict or disasters.
Nyarai explained the cases coming through the door: “Blast injuries… multiple fractures on the body and then you have to decide which one to do first.” She added: “Mainly we’ve done soldiers…once you arrange all the bones, they go.”
She continued: “When I look at the age and then the disability and then this is someone who is just helping his country and got injured. You are thinking there is no choice. So this is inflicted on him now. Now he’s going to start a new life at 25 or 26… It’s a husband or someone’s son. So it touches me so much, thinking what can we do? So by fixing the bone I feel as if we can give him a bit of life, if there’s a leg which is stabilised in a plaster or put in plates.”
Zimbabwean-born Nyarai, who came to Britain in 1999 and lives in Carlisle, told of one shocking case of a patient whose leg had to be amputated. “My first one actually was a patient with a tourniquet for four days,” Nyarai explained.
She said he was asking if his leg was going to be saved. “There was no blood supply to the foot,” Nyarai said. “There’s no chance. But you can’t tell them. Not false promises, but you just allay anxiety.” As Nyarai spoke, an air alert went off warning of a potential attack. Yet she was calm; it’s a regular occurrence of life in war-torn Ukraine.
Another of those helping to tend to patients is Ukrainian scrub nurse Tania Kornienko, aged just 23. She said: “Most people who work at this hospital have open hearts who come here only to do their job but it’s more about the calling of their heart and soul.”
The medic, whose boyfriend is a soldier the same age as her serving since he was just 18, added: “I can’t plan the future and can’t say about tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but I truly believe that it will be victory and we all are doing everything to make the victory happen quicker.” The Mirror is not naming the hospitals for security reasons.
Attacks in Zaporizhzhia, a city in south-east Ukraine, are frequent with the frontline so close. Russia started hitting the city with aerial glide bombs late last year – putting more civilians at risk. At least 25 civilians were killed and 221 injured from September to the end of November, according to the UN.
On 7 November, bombs struck an apartment block, leaving eight civilians dead including a boy of one, his mother and grandmother. But on a week-long trip ahead of the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, the Mirror saw how life has somehow continued. To the south of the city in the region of the same name stands Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe – under Russian occupation.
Over 12,000 civilians have been killed and more than 29,000 injured since 24 February 2022, according to the UN. In December, Zelensky said some 43,000 of his nation’s soldiers had been killed since the full-on invasion. And earlier this month, he claimed Russia had lost nearly 250,000 troops in the war.