Story of my trip to war-torn Ukraine first published in The Weekend Australian Magazine on Dec 9th, 2023

Into Kherson: a doctor’s sobering testimony

I have worked in remote communities for ­decades, and I have seen and experienced traumas and horrific things that many have not. But nothing had prepared me for this.
By Lara Wieland

From The Weekend Australian Magazine
December 9, 2023
13 minute read

Venturing deeper into the ­de-occupied Kherson region of war-torn Ukraine, through forests and fields that had been battlefields months earlier, we followed a road transformed. Potholes revealed themselves to be the scars of artillery fire. Trees lay shattered and splintered. Remnants of the village of Bilohirka, largely obliterated, loomed ahead. The blackened fields around us were littered with the debris of shattered machinery, ­remnants of homes, landmines, unexploded rockets, and eerie traces of the bodies of ­Russian soldiers pressed into the dirt. This scene will forever haunt me.

It’s a long way from the Aboriginal ­communities in Cape York where I usually ­volunteer and work as a doctor. I jumped at the chance when John Whitehall, a pediatric ­professor colleague from Sydney, proposed a mission: working with the Christian Medical Association of Ukraine (an NGO that our charity now partners with) for five weeks in July and August to understand how war is ­impacting Ukraine’s children. I was there to bear witness and hear their experiences. The haunted eyes of those affected by war tell a story more heartbreaking than I could have imagined. As a ­doctor working in remote communities for ­decades, I have seen and experienced traumas and horrific things that many have not. But nothing had prepared me for this.

Bilohirka, once a peaceful village of around 200 people, sits in the south of the country and was among the first taken by the Russians when they invaded their neighbour in February 2022, shocking the world. Pastor Oleg Ivanov and others from his church in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih have led us here; it’s one of many villages he has been providing support and aid to since it was liberated by Ukrainian forces in September last year.

Ukraine War: ‘No place is too sacred for an air strike’

He is a lean, swarthy man with kind eyes and a cheeky sense of humour. I am shocked to think that people are living here among the rubble, trying to rebuild their shattered lives. As we approach, we see remnants of parachutes ­attached to devastating 500kg bombs hanging from trees. Blobs of phosphorus from thermobaric bombs lie across the fields; a ­molten ­tractor engine shows their devastating effect.

Pastor Oleg takes me to visit one of the ­families he has been providing aid to. When we are sitting with Sergei and Tanya, a farming couple in their sixties, in a makeshift shelter of timber scraps and UN-donated tarps, there is a loud explosion. I take a deep breath and glance at our hosts, their faces etched with fear and exhaustion. There’s a second explosion that sounds closer, and Tanya jumps; her eyes fill with tears and her hands shake. Clearly, she is deeply traumatised. I’m later told these explosions happen several times most days.

Sergei’s house in Ukraine. Picture: Christian Samorodov @Samoristian

The pull of Ukraine is deeply personal for me. My grandfather, ­Nikodym Pliczkowski, affectionately known as Dyeda, was a Ukrainian dissident born in 1905 under the heavy hand of Russian oppression. He grew up on forbidden verses of the great Ukrainian poet and national hero Taras Shevchenko, and whispered tales of ancestral Cossack freedom. The harrowing 1930s Holodomor – a man-made famine – saw many of his family starve to death. Others were exiled to Siberian gulags or executed by Stalin’s regime. Despite having to come to Australia as a refugee with his wife, Wassa, and my mother, Vitya, Dyeda’s spirit remained indomitable, advocating tirelessly for Ukraine’s independence.

Living with him during my student years, I was deeply influenced by his vivid stories of Ukraine’s landscapes and its resilient people with their desire for freedom and independence. While I had longed to visit, I feared that the real Ukraine might pale in comparison to Dyeda’s tales. But my profound connection to him eventually overpowered any reservations.

Down the road from Bilohirka, the home of a younger couple, Sasha and Irina, bore witness to another horror: a shed filled with cluster munitions. Ten of the bombs had been recovered from their own yard. “Russians want to kill us,” Sasha said with chilling simplicity. They ­graciously welcomed us into what remained of their home – a room with one wall and half a roof. A salvaged picture of a galloping horse, symbolising freedom, was hung there defiantly.

The couple and their young son hid in a dirt bunker for a month under Russian shelling, waiting for an escape route. Sasha’s makeshift defences against rockets – a series of concrete-filled drums – miraculously held. Their traumatised son, whose eyes spoke volumes of the horrors he’d witnessed, found little solace in a gifted train set from Pastor Oleg. Sasha’s once ­simple and joyful life, marked by his garden and home, lay in ruins. “Why did they do this?” he lamented. The aftermath of the ­destruction of the nearby Kakhovka Dam by Russian bombs brought a different kind of devastation: the stench of dead fish and livestock, intermingled with that of the abandoned bodies of Russian soldiers.

 

Shelling damage to Sasha’s bunker, where he, his wife Irina and their young son hid for a month under Russian shelling. Picture: Lara Wieland

Ukraine is nearly two years into a war with Russia. Bilohirka – or what’s left of it – has been liberated, but many other villages are still under occupation and there is a raging frontline not far from where we are now, across the Dnipro River. There is also an informational frontline, where pro-Russian narratives spread globally. Using digital platforms, trolls and fabricated journalist profiles, this relentless propaganda seeks to degrade Ukraine’s morale, question its sovereignty, misrepresent its ­actions, undermine global support and sow chaos.

Throughout our journey, we aimed to ­discern the truth. After being introduced to and interviewing diverse Ukrainians – including refugees, doctors, soldiers, NGO workers, ­hospital workers and frontline workers – we ­realised how skewed some narratives were.

One was the notion that Russian-speaking Ukrainians desired Russian integration. In fact, while it’s common to hear Russian spoken here, it’s almost always a colonial remnant from the Soviet era, not a sign of loyalty. My grandfather’s stories of having to speak Ukrainian in secret mirrored what I heard of what was happening in occupied areas. The Ukrainian language, long suppressed, is now being embraced; people are desperate to learn to speak only Ukrainian, as the Russian they’ve spoken all their lives is now a language ­associated with oppression. Pastor Oleg himself – born in Ukraine to a Siberian ­father and Russian ­mother – spoke only ­Russian for 57 years. Yet the conflict ignited an identity shift, and he now communicates solely in Ukrainian.

I ­accompanied a medical convoy to the ­recently liberated village of Stanislav, which sits near the mouth of the Dnipro River. Clouds of smoke from artillery shelling could be seen as we drove for many hours through checkpoints to this remote village in Kherson district.

In the clinic, I talked with shell-shocked ­survivors. An elderly woman showed me an X-ray of the shrapnel that had been lodged in her chest since the early days of the invasion. Others told me tales of friends and neighbours who were murdered in cold blood, women who were assaulted and people killed by artillery strikes. Two weeks after I left this village it was shelled again. A month after that, the clinic ­itself was bombed. Two months later it was bombed again, and 30 villagers’ homes were damaged. How much more does this place, and so many like it, have to endure?

I met refugees from Russian-occupied ­Donetsk in Ukraine’s east, who bristled at the notion that a ­majority of people in that area wish to join ­Russia. Ukrainians met the predominant Russian narrative of “liberating” them from “Nazi leaders” with sarcastic quips. “Liberating us from a good life?” they would say as they gestured to bomb-damaged homes. These Russian-speaking Ukrainians had no desire for what Russia offered, a position made clear by their act of defiantly planting Ukrainian flags amid the ruins.

Refugees from Russian-occupied ­Donetsk in Ukraine’s east. Picture: Lara Wieland

So far in this conflict, Ukraine has had the backing of many western countries. But in the US, President Joe Biden now faces opposition from some Republicans in Congress who seek to block his latest military aid package. And in ­positioning himself for another run at the ­presidency in 2024, Donald Trump has refused to commit to providing support to Ukraine. At a meeting of NATO held in Brussels last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denied that his country and Russia had reached a “stalemate” and rubbished the suggestion Ukraine should pursue a ceasefire with Russia.

The Ukrainians I met were staunchly ­opposed to ceding territory to Russia. A refugee from ­occupied Donetsk summed it up by saying it would be better to die than to allow Russia to unleash “ethnic cleansing” and turn Ukraine into a “concentration camp”. Locals fear that the occupation’s grim realities will only fully emerge upon liberation, as they did in Bucha, the now infamous area north of the capital Kyiv. And most Ukrainians believe that Putin’s colonialist, genocidal ambitions extend far ­beyond Ukraine – a notion grasped by many other former Soviet states, too.

David Staryk, a young neurosurgeon from Dnipro, recounted how he would perform three to four major brain surgeries per shift, removing bullets and shrapnel from the skulls of young men. One surgery took him eight hours. Another man had to be operated on four times in one shift. He showed me some pictures and videos of chunks of metal inside young men’s heads. At Dnipro Hospital staff see 13-15 such cases daily. “We realise just what a high price we are paying for our independence, for our rights, for our freedom,” Staryk told me. “But we understand that we must do everything.”

Staryk said he does not know how much longer this can go on. Ukraine is losing a generation of young men to this war – men who wanted to go on to have families, build the economy, contribute to their country. As well as the dead, many are so badly injured that they will not be able to do any of this. Staryk is not sure how long he can keep this up; it has been emotionally brutal, not to mention the physical toll of operating day and night endlessly.

David Staryk with Lara Wieland. Picture: Lara Wieland

My conversations with Mark Kupchenenko, a 27-year-old military chaplain who worked on the battlefields of Bakhmut, haunt me still. I had noticed him initially as a quiet, withdrawn guy in army fatigues who went everywhere with his gorgeous puppy, named Bakhmut ­because its mother had been killed in the fighting there. The soldiers had adopted the puppy but then had to move on to a more dangerous position, so he took the dog on. Mark looked like someone carrying a very heavy burden. Weighed with grief, he had attended five ­funerals that week for his unit’s soldiers. ­Despite witnessing unspeakable horrors, Mark’s passion burned bright. He stressed that ignoring injustice only emboldens oppressors, and insisted that we all bear ­responsibility to confront the spreading evil. Tragically, Mark lost his own life the very next day; he was killed in a car accident on the way to another soldier’s funeral. I recall some of his final words. “When you see the corpses, the body parts, the rape, torture and violence, you understand – we cannot let humanity lose. Despite the bloodshed, we ­cannot negotiate with this evil, we must cut off its head no matter the price … or our children will pay in slavery. Freedom is worth any price.”

A boy mourns his father, in Ukraine. Picture: Lara Wieland

Foreigners have chosen to stand alongside Ukrainians, volunteering to fight with them, ­including several young Australians who have lost their lives. The commanding officer of one unit, a man from Sweden, told me: “We are here to fight for the freedom of the world.”

Western Christians are particularly targeted by Russian propaganda portraying Ukraine as a persecutor of Christians and Putin as ­waging a “holy war”. Contrary to this, many Ukrainians proudly integrate their Christian ethics into daily life, striving to move beyond the Soviet era corruption. I observed churches spearheading humanitarian operations, from sheltering refugees to assisting soldiers and supporting ­orphans. Ukraine’s Christian community stands as a beacon of hope, increasingly recognised by the broader population.

Iryna Hodenko and her church volunteers from Kryvyi Rih have brought joy to countless young souls scarred by conflict, providing ­vacation programs for kids in de-occupied, ­devastated villages like Bila Krynytsa. Amid the ruins, laughter resonated on school grounds scarred by shelling, with a war-damaged school bus bearing testimony to the horror. The lack of running water – due to the ­Russians destroying the dam – only added to the ­adversity. The children’s laughter was accompanied by the not-so-distant thud of explosions. Ukrainian soldiers who were training nearby came to ­educate these innocent souls on the dangers of ordnances, some of which eerily resemble toys. It was harrowing to watch children learning to dodge death in their own playgrounds.

Irina’s kid’s camp with rocket holes visible in the school lawn. Picture: Lara Wieland

The deep psychological wounds the war has inflicted on children are apparent everywhere. Nightmares, anxiety and disrupted education are their daily battles. A Kyiv-based NGO named Save Ukraine shared chilling stories of children taken to Russia for indoctrination or subjected to unimaginable atrocities. Institutions in western Ukraine overflow with traumatised orphans and state wards evacuated from war zones.

Volunteers bridge the chasm of loss, offering love, therapy and medical care to kids haunted by what they’d experienced. Picture: Lara Wieland

Ukrainians, fuelled by compassion, are stepping up. Churches provide sanctuary, while NGOs like Voices of Children use therapeutic art to help children navigate their trauma, with the art transitioning from war scenes to serene landscapes. Save Ukraine is instrumental in evacuating and supporting vulnerable families, and rescuing abducted children. Andriy, a former soldier who was tortured by the Russians, was reuniting with his family via Save Ukraine; he now aids others in finding safety and solace.

I saw that Russia relentlessly attacks civilian sanctuaries – churches, schools, hospitals and homes. Andriy, a young man from Bucha, recounted the harrowing image captured by a friend, revealing the depths of the aggressors’ brutality: a basement filled with victims, among them a violated nine-year-old girl. ­Another gut-wrenching tale came from an ­elderly woman who saw a young Russian ­soldier executed by his superior for protesting against the atrocities on women.

Pastor Oleg reflected on the intensifying cruelty of the Russian forces, noting their deepening disdain for everything Ukrainian. Yet the struggle of reconciling faith with war ­remains, as many wrestle with the ethics of self-defence. The poignant words of Pastor Dmitru, another army chaplain, stayed with me: “They don’t kill enemies because they hate them; they kill them because they love those they protect.”
Aftermath of combat in Myroliubivka, a village liberated from Russian occupation in Kherson, Ukraine. Picture: Getty
Aftermath of combat in Myroliubivka, a village liberated from Russian occupation in Kherson, Ukraine. Picture: Getty

Some might argue that the conflict is purely a regional issue, questioning the rationale ­behind international support for Ukraine. ­Russian disinformation further fans these ­sentiments, targeting those countries struggling with their own hardships. While the monetary ­figures associated with military aid for Ukraine seem staggering, they are a tiny fraction of ­global military expenditures and mostly used to replenish outdated equipment given to Ukraine. Many recognise that any assistance is a vital investment against unchecked imperialism and a deterrent to other potential threats that we are now seeing unfold.

Through all the first-hand stories I heard in Ukraine, it became clear why its people know they cannot negotiate peace – and even amid the trauma their spirit shone, emphasising ­humanity over hatred. Conversations often ­circled back to common themes: Ukrainians’ aspiration for a nation grounded in Christian values of love, compassion and forgiveness. ­Another clear message emerged: they want only to be equipped to protect themselves and stop evil in its tracks. Ukrainians comprehend the gravity of their stand against tyranny and its global implications; they merely desire a less devastating and brutal path to the objective.

Kid’s camp volunteers at a deoccupied village in Ukraine. Picture: Lara Wieland

Back in the de-occupied village of Bilohirka, sitting beneath a tree among the rubble with village elders Valya, Grisha and Nadia, my translator conveys Nadia’s words: “I see your kind heart, you truly care for us.” Holding back tears, I’m reminded of the profound grace of the Ukrainian people. I’ve done nothing; they seek not charity, but solidarity.

I found a Ukraine that went beyond stereotypes and defied propaganda; I found the resilient spirit that my grandfather once spoke of – a spirit that melds fierce Cossack pride with heartwarming warmth. The haunting tales of Hitler and Stalin from my youth, and my visit as an adult to Auschwitz, solidified the vow of “never again” in my heart. History’s warnings are clear. We must pierce through the veil of deceit and misinformation and stand unwaveringly with Ukraine, recognising that the liberty and democracy they fiercely defend is not just their cause, but also ours – a freedom too many of us accept as a given. b

Dr Lara Wieland runs a charity that supports vital causes in Ukraine. Tax-deductible donations can be made through the Australian-registered charity at passingthrough.net/donating

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