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I worked as a surgeon at the Regional Hospital in Mariupol. February 24 began for me in the morning, with the delivery of the first wounded. The first military man was "Azov" soldier.

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I remembered him, he was Polish, Tomasz Pastemski. His left arm was severely wounded; the question was whether to amputate or try to do something, the major nerves and vessels were injured.

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We managed to save [the arm]. We performed plastic surgery on him, sutured veins instead of an artery. He stayed in our hospital for 5 or 6 days, then the military evacuated him. When he was leaving, 

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his arm was alive; unhealthy but alive, let's say so. It was far from healthy. After that, I know for sure, he underwent two more reconstructions. He was undergoing surgeries in Lviv. That is, the arm remained,

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but how it will recover is a different matter. That was the first patient we remembered. Then we had wounded civilians with explosive injuries, shrapnel wounds. And in most cases, there wasn't much metal;

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there were secondary fragments. Stones, something like that. That's how the 24th began. Then I went to work every other day. On March 3, I came to work and did not return home, I lived in the hospital, in the surgery block.

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They were wounded every day. There were military as well, but fewer and fewer. There were more of them at first. We mostly had civilians, there were very few gunshot wounds, mostly shrapnel, both metal and secondary.

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There were deceased and wounded children. The first child was already mentioned, I saw it somewhere online. A 5-year-old girl, the family was under shelling. The grown-ups are higher and the girl is little, she stood near them.

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They had limb injuries, while the girl had a wound to the heart. I remember that episode. Can't say for sure, it was in the last days of February, on the 27th or 28th, or something like that.

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The girl was brought in, they tried to resuscitate her in the admission department, but then I made surgical wound exploration... She was unconscious, unresponsive; anaesthesiologists and resuscitators were performing resuscitation.

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I made surgical wound exploration and said: "Guys, stop it, it's heart, she is unresponsive". That was the first child. A girl. Later on, there were children as well. Boys were brought. According to those who brought them,

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they were taken from the sports ground near the school. They went to have fun and play football in between the shelling. It was at that artificial turf football ground near the school, and a shell hit that ground.

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I don't know who was that stupid, they or their parents. How come one gets and idea to go and play football in between the shelling? As we were told, one supposedly died at the scene, they didn't manage to bring him to us.

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And one of those who was brought to us had severe abdominal and spinal injuries. I operated on him, and then handed him over to neurosurgeons, who made revisions and said:

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"Things are looking bad, the spine is fractured with spinal cord damage". That is, no chance. His life was saved, but he remained paralyzed for life, with his spine completely shattered. The other one was in the neurosurgery department.

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I went there only to do bandages for him. Another boy was in our department of surgery, he was wounded in the right leg I think. After the surgery and a revision, the ischemia growth was becoming more apparent day by day.

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The question of amputation arose. But he refused, they kept delaying... I don't know his fate afterward. There was a boy about 10 years old. His mother had a chest wound and a lung injury. We began operating on her,

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and the boy was sitting there. We sat him down there, gave him some tea and a blanket to keep him warm. And then: "Do you have any pain? Let me see". And he kept silent the whole time. We undressed him,

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had a look and he had a fragment chest wound too. He didn't even complain, he was worried about his mom all the time. We took him. No general anesthesia was necessary, and under local anesthesia, we began removing the fragments.

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Whether it hurt or not, he kept asking: "How is my mom?" Both mom and boy survived. Later, they were on the fourth floor in the department of surgery, I remember. We left on March 16. On the morning of the 13th orks entered the hospital.

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We were still working. And on the 15th they told me... We had no communication and electricity, but some people had communication. They came and quietly told me that it seemed that MSS "DPR" had declared me as wanted.

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What I was supposed to wait for? On the 16th in the morning I rushed to see if my car was there, if it was intact. It was intact and it even started. No other way then. The day before the 15th, there was quite a big stream of cars as they told.

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Like a corridor was opened, something like that. When I was running home to get my car, I saw thousands of cars heading in the direction of Nikolske – such was a convoy.

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We came to an agreement with the doctors with whom we lived at that hospital. Those who had cars would take as many as they could with them, we would gather and go. In such a stream it was possible to slip through.

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That's how it worked out. Because I don't understand how they could have investigated everyone at the checkpoints. There were thousands of cars and all of them were full. That's how we got out. I picked my wife and three interns, put them in the back seat and we left.

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After we left, we spent the first night in Zaporizhzhia. Then we headed to Dnipro. I have a fellow student there, a good friend of mine. We stayed 2-3 days at his place and then went to Western Ukraine.

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I think that russia will die. And what will happen with Ukraine, who knows. It will be badly injured. I'm not sure, as they declared, that there will be a full recovery from the 22nd.

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I think that the "grey areas" will remain for a very long time - that's what history teaches us. There are so many territories of that kind in the world. We didn't pay attention to them before,

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but they do exist. Ukraine will be crippled in this way, and russia will be ruined. They will not be tolerated in this form. I realize that it will take a long time,

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it won't be quickly, and very extensively. When will that happen? It will take years, but it will be a natural outcome.