In the villages liberated by the Ukrainian army, life is slowly resuming. The inhabitants who had fled are beginning to return little by little, but many houses have been destroyed or badly damaged and there is still no water or electricity. The commune of Vyssokopillia, 4,000 inhabitants before the war, no longer has a hospital or a doctor. During the war, two nurses provided care.
With our special correspondents in Vysokopillia, Anastasia Becchio and Boris Vichith,
Hidden behind a trellis from which hang bunches of black grapes, the house of Nadiia Tsalinska was well known to the 286 inhabitants who remained in Vyssokopillia during the Russian occupation. When the shelling started, the hospital where she was head nurse closed. And it was in her living room, damaged by two shellfire, filled with boxes of medicines, that the sixty-year-old welcomed the sick and injured with another colleague.
This is where we infused, treated. Just before the war, I had received a large order for medicine at the hospital. Luckily we had time to transport them to my house
Sheets to replace bandages
Stopping a haemorrhage, removing shrapnel or treating a chronic illness, Nadiia and Svitlana Vlassenko have seen more than 100 patients pass through. When they ran out of bandages, the nurses cut up sheets. For water, we had to go and draw it several hundred meters away, under the bombardments. ” 14 people died like this while fetching water “says a neighbor.
But the most difficult, says Nadiia, was the cohabitation with the Russians who suspected her of treating Ukrainian soldiers.
Every day and several times a day, we were visited by four armed men. We had to report to them on our activity. They told us: if a Ukrainian soldier or a stranger comes to see you, you must tell us. They wanted us to report them. A drone regularly flew over our house and we were instructed to go out into the yard so that they could see that we were still there.
During the occupation period which lasted more than five months, Nadiia also lost her diabetic husband. Due to lack of treatment, he died of a thrombosis on August 22, the day a second shell hit his house.
Today, helped by friends, the nurse is doing work to be able to welcome patients again as soon as possible, until the doctors return, probably not for several months.
► To read also: Ukraine: in the liberated villages, the inhabitants still haunted by the Russian occupation
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