Ukraine Diary
Bucha
No words
Editor’s Note: In February, Working Nurse launched The Zhytomyr Hospital Challenge to purchase medical equipment for a hospital in Ukraine. This fundraising campaign was a huge success. In June, Olena Svetlov and I traveled to Ukraine to complete our mission.
I share excerpts from my journal in this Ukraine Diary online series.
Today was a tough one.
We hired a driver to take us to Bucha, a leafy residential suburb about 40 minutes outside Kyiv. In the opening weeks of the war, Russian soldiers invaded Bucha. Intense bombing followed and horrific atrocities committed against civilians — rape, torture, executions. The Church of St. Andrew became a morgue where bodies were stacked in mass graves.
It was to this church that Olena and I went to pay our respects to the victims of Bucha.
Dozens of poster-size photographs documenting the horror were set on easels around the perimeter of the main room. One that haunts me: a boy randomly shot lying beside his bicycle, his dog sitting patiently nearby still leashed to the boy’s wrist.
Olena struck up a conversation with a woman mopping the floors. She told us her home had been bombed during the invasion, trapping her and her severely disabled son beneath the rubble overnight.
Downstairs, we met her son, who is permanently confined to a wheelchair, but whose mind remains sharp. (As it turns out, he is a chess champion!)
We gave her a small sum from our fund to help rebuild her life and care for her son. The donors who made this mission possible were with us in spirit that day.
Other Ukraine Diary entries:
Visiting Zhytomyr Hospital
Planes, Trains, and Eight Stuffed Suitcases
Resistance at the Kyiv Museum of History
Air Sirens and Bomb Shelters
First Aid Kits for Police Officers
The Ballet Studio
Animal Rescue
The story from the Feb. 21 issue that launched The Zhytomyr Hospital Challenge.
