People take cover from shelling in the city of Bucha, Ukraine, west of Kyiv, on March 4.Photo: ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty
“The wounded are being brought to us all the time,” Vladislav Gorbovyetz, a vascular surgeon in Bucha, Ukraine, tells PEOPLE. “We live in fear of being bombed, we do our work, we get on with it. We have no other aim in life.”
“There wasn’t any healthy tissue there,” he says of first seeing the girl’s left arm. “She had gangrene because she’d been in a basement for two days and nights with the wounds festering from the appalling injuries that these monsters inflicted on her. So we made the decision to amputate.”
Sasha’s family was fleeing Hostomel, Ukraine, when their car came under fire, Gorbovyetz says. The girl and other relatives survived but her stepfather, Mikhail Grabovlyak, was killed.
“The mother [Yulia Filipchuk],” he adds, “was completely out of her mind with grief” when she finally arrived at the hospital with her daughter.
Ukraine.DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty
Sasha’s father, Anton Fillipchuk, tells PEOPLE that Sasha’s mother managed to get a brief connection to communicate with her family in the hours after they first came under attack while they were sheltering underground.
Anton says that while on the phone, they relayed medical advice to Sasha and Yulia via another doctor — “how to treat her arm, how to bandage her. There were antibiotics and painkillers. There were a lot of people down there with supplies.”
“We tried absolutely everything to get them out, but that cellar was in the epicenter of a full-on battle,” Anton says. Pleas from the trapped civilians didn’t work, neither did spreading the word via social media.
Eventually, miraculously, Anton says that Sasha’s mother wrapped them up together in a white sheet and, along with three others, “carried her out.”
Gorbovyetz says it was the first time in 30 years of practicing medicine that he has seen gangrene on a young girl.
“She was white as a sheet. She couldn’t answer questions, she was so cold. I tried to comfort her while the [others] were preparing her for the operation. I tried to tell her she’d be fine,” he says. “She was completely numb. She couldn’t feel any pain in her arm. She was in shock. All she could say was that she was cold and very scared, but she could barely speak.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Speaking with PEOPLE, Gorbovyetz described the heartbreak of treating wounded children, comforting distraught parents and witnessing the “elderly crawling out of bunkers and being mowed down” in the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital.
“Our soldiers only attack other soldiers but as for [the Russians], they are indiscriminate,” he says, sobbing at times during the interview. “I am a humane person; I work in a humane profession. But I want to tear them to pieces with my bare hands. Everyone here feels that way.”
Anton, Sasha’s father, says she subsequently moved to a hospital outside of Rome. Her mom also tells PEOPLE she has recovered.
“She’s come out from under the anesthesia and is fine. I’m in Kyiv now. Am I safe? Yes. My president is living in Kyiv. We’re being bombed once or twice a day, but I don’t want to leave here,” her dad says.
Russian attacks continue some three weeks after their forces launched a large-scale invasion on Feb. 24 — the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.
Anton and Yulia Fillipchuk’s daughter, Sasha.Courtesy Yulia Filipchuk
With NATO forces massing in the region around Ukraine, various countries have also pledged aid or military support to the resistance. Ukraine PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyycalled for peace talks — so far unsuccessful — while urging his country to fight back.
Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.
“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,“he told the European Unionin a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.”
source: people.com
