Medic who cared for Mariupol wounded heads for Ukraine front

By Hanna Arihova | Affiliated Push

KHARKIV, Ukraine — For 22 times, Serhiy Chornobryvets hardly slept and not often took off his red paramedic uniform. Working day and night time, he raced all-around his hometown of Mariupol, rescuing those wounded by the Russian bombs and shells that pummeled the southern Ukrainian town.

When he last but not least escaped Mariupol — whose citizens endured some of the worst struggling of the war throughout a almost 3-month siege — he still did not rest. As an alternative, he joined an organization that sends medics to the front lines in eastern Ukraine, wherever the battling is presently concentrated.

“Me ahead of Mariupol and me following what took place: It is two diverse people,” the skinny, fresh-confronted 24-yr-aged stated during a recent job interview with The Connected Press in Kharkiv, yet another town that has endured extreme bombardment.

“If I experienced not survived Mariupol, I would not have gone to do the job as a paramedic now. I would not have experienced enough braveness,” described Chornobryvets, who is simply identified as “Mariupol” on the battlefield and now wears a patch that bears the image of the port metropolis, a yellow anchor, on his camouflage uniform.

In truth, he could see no other way of earning perception of the horrors he witnessed in a put that became a around the world image of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion. People suffered relentless bombardment, lots of trapped without food stuff, h2o, heat or electric power.

“It was like heading back to the Stone Age,” Chornobryvets stated. “There was looting, regular shelling, planes, aerial bombardment. Individuals all over us have been dropping their minds, but we bought on with our work.”

Although several hid in basements or bomb shelters, Chornobryvets mentioned he never did. He stayed over ground to have a tendency to the wounded — all even though risking his possess existence. He lastly fled on March 18 — his birthday — still in his pink paramedic’s overalls.

His tireless endeavours were being publicly praised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, when the chief acknowledged an award in May from the Atlantic Council, the Washington-centered consider tank, on behalf of the Ukrainian persons.

Chornobryvets said that his new get the job done on the entrance and what he did in Mariupol were being pretty much indistinguishable: “Same wounds, only I’m carrying a different uniform.”

In footage from July, he and his fellow medics can be seen hurrying toward a soldier hit by Russian fireplace. They tightened a tourniquet all around the man’s correct thigh, and then carefully tended to a gaping wounds in an arm and a leg, where the bone was exposed.

He has a yr left of faculty to end — but resists generating plans for the potential. Right up until the war is received, he has vowed to continue to be on the battlefield.

“Medicine is my existence, and my duty is to help you save men and women,” reported Chornobryvets.