“After first fight, gender was nonissue, we gained a lot of respect from fighters". Story of Hospitallers medic Tsybukh

8 years of experience in war

We meet Iryna Tsybukh in Kyiv. Long blonde hair contrasts with the rough military uniform. She came from the front for rotation.

“It seems as if my friends managed everything, succeeded in everything, have new projects, and live a great life despite the war. I want to keep up on all fronts too: to be a first-class medic on the front line and at the same time, continue a peaceful life. But it doesn’t work out,” says the girl.

Until February 24, Iryna had been writing her master’s thesis, she was a media trainer, volunteer, and producer at Suspilne media. She had been making a film about children in remote Ukrainian villages in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Recording what they dreamed of. The film was never presented in Kyiv — the screening was supposed to take place on February 25.

Iryna started going to war back in 2015 when she was 16 years old. She had a lot of friends from the Maidan, she wanted to be on the same front as them. She used to bring aid to the soldiers as a volunteer, learned how to provide first aid, and tried to be useful.

“I was a young maximalist girl with a very patriotic attitude, very self-confident. There were the best people at war, and I really wanted to gain their respect. They taught me the best practices I know: combat tactics, how to shoot different weapons, and how to keep a team together.”

A brief pause. Iryna looks confused and coughs. And then she explains:

“Two of those people died. I hope they look at me from above and see that I am performing well. I have grown up, I am very demanding of myself and my team. I have significantly improved my skills and now we can save lives better.”

Iryna, a journalist, has no medical or military education. She studied medicine with the Special Forces Medical Unit “White Berets” and with American doctors. These were basic skills: stop the bleeding, restore breathing, and so on. She got more thorough practice in the Hospitallers battalion that she joined two years ago. At that time, she couldn’t have imagined that the knowledge she gained would be useful on the front line during a full-scale war.

She evacuates fighters straight from hell

Since 2015, Iryna has traveled to Donetsk and Luhansk regions to talk to local children about the Revolution of Dignity. She organized discussion clubs: they discussed democracy, gender equality, and propaganda. She knows for sure that the children she was talking to at the time left the occupation and chose Ukraine, not Russia.

On February 24, Iryna was also in the Donetsk region to present her film in Kramatorsk. Immediately after the invasion, she realized that she would be most effective at the front. After all, in the Hospitallers battalion, she learned how to provide medical care in critical situations. After that, there were combat missions in the Kyiv region, Avdiivka, Pisky, Marinka, and other hot spots of the Donetsk region.

Their medical team consists of three people: Iryna, a professional doctor, and a surgeon. As soon as they receive a signal that a soldier has been wounded, they take him out straight from the hell, provide first aid and take him to the evacuation point. And then the soldier gets to the stabilization point.

It happens that due to heavy shelling, a fighter cannot be immediately transferred to the next doctor. In their medical vehicle (if the injury is survivable), Iryna’s team can keep a military man alive for up to 4 hours.

“It brings incredible happiness when the doctors who receive our wounded man thank us for establishing venous access, pouring enough infusion into him, and doing everything right. And it’s a special feeling when a few hours after the evacuation, a fighter writes “Thank you, Cheka, they are already taking me to Dnipro.” And then he returns to his position and comes up to hug. This gives you the strength to continue working,” says Iryna, her eyes glowing.

Military men often say that the most difficult thing at war is the sound of explosions because they mean someone’s death. For Iryna, war will always be associated with other sounds: screams and moans of fighters. This sound goes through your veins and remains in your memory forever. To cope with this and avoid a meltdown, Iryna works with a psychologist. She considers it basic self-care.

“Moaning men is very difficult. At such moments, you realize that the fighter experienced something that he does not have the strength to endure. And you do everything you can to make it at least a little easier for him so that the indicators stabilize and he reaches the stabilization point. I remember each fighter, not by his face or where we evacuated him from. I remember him by his injury and how courageously he endured the injury. How he screamed, cried, swore. These moments will always be a part of me,” says the Hospitaller fighter.

There are no men and women — there are “combatants” 

There are lots of talismans on Iryna’s uniform. The miniature helmet figurine is a present from the deputy company commander. A dried flower next to it is a gift from one of the fighters. On the left, there is a watch strap. Iryna lost the watch in early March near Irpin during a mortar attack and kept the strap as a memory about that period of her life.

In other pockets of her tactical vest, there are a pulse oximeter, glasses, a flashlight with a red light (so that enemies do not notice from the sky), and scissors. There are also a radio station, tourniquet, and markers. On her glove, Iryna writes with a marker the information about the rescued soldier and a list of drugs that she administered. She has to tell this information to the doctors who will continue to bring the military back to life.

Instead of a bulletproof vest, Cheka has a plate carrier. It’s not very suitable for the female body either.

“When men wear the armor, it fits snugly to their chest. But it doesn’t suit me — there is a buffer in the chest area when I put it on. It’s not too safe and not too comfortable. A fragment can get in and injure you. But I haven’t seen any better armor for women yet. In this sense, there is still a long way to inclusivity at war,” says Iryna.

In other respects, war equates women and men, says Iryna. Gender is no longer an issue after the first fight.

“We evacuate fighters from the hottest places — when they go to clear up the liberated territories, storm Russian positions. Therefore, after the first evacuation, all gender issues disappeared. Our team got into a very difficult situation where we risked dying or being captured. We gained a lot of respect from the fighters. Now the commander considers our crew as a full-fledged combat unit and sets us appropriate tasks. At war, they value professionalism, not gender.”

Hospitallers ensure that their doctors are equipped with everything they need. This is one of the reasons why Iryna remains in the volunteer organization basically as a volunteer, and does not join the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“People often ask me how I am living without a salary. I don’t think I would have had a salary anyway. Because I would buy all the necessary medical supplies at my own expense,” she says.

“When we liberate Donetsk and Luhansk, we will have to work with children there”

While Iryna is in Kyiv on rotation, she wants to resume her studies at the University and return to work on her master’s thesis. But she will change the topic of the paper. Before February 24, the girl had been developing a methodology for awareness-raising lessons at schools. The Ministry of Education was going to put her advice into practice. Now, she will study information policy in the de-occupied territories. She says that this topic will soon become extremely important.

“In the first months of the full-scale war, it seemed to me that we had no future. And now I see the success of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and I have hope that Ukraine will be able to de-occupy Donetsk and Luhansk. We will have to carry out awareness-raising work for the children who have been under Russian occupation for so long. I want to work with this topic, involve the best experts so that we are ready for the liberation of territories without any delays,” says Iryna.

She won’t stop going to the front. On his next trip to the front line, she plans to take 500 pages of scientific research in English — she will read them in the trenches if there is time for this. However, she admits that she has not finished reading a single book that she took with her to the front: there was too much work on the evacuation.

When Ukraine wins, Iryna will defend her diploma thesis and engage in Information Policy.

“I want to get back to my old self, live a cool civilian life — with good coffee and good friends. In the evenings, drink wine on Podil and have intellectual conversations about the future and ambitious plans. Work as a bureaucrat in a small department and develop children’s education. This is my mission, this is what I believe in.”

This partner pieceis published as an advertisement. The article was created in collaboration with the UN Women project “Decentralization Reforms and Community Security: Transformative Approaches to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Ukraine” funded by the Danish government.

Journalist Tetiana Honchenko, editors Khrystyna Kotsira and Victoria Beha, designer Tetiana Kostik, creative producer Anna Sokha, and translator Khrystyna Skorenka worked on the material.