“Death is my personal enemy”: military medic Ruda reveals how medics fight in war

Ruda ("Redhead") is a medic from the 73rd Special Operations Forces Centre who works in the hottest spots of the combat zone together with her fellow medics. She meets soldiers who come back from a combat mission "with barotraumas, shrapnel wounds and many more things" almost every day, she says in a video published by the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine (SOF). Ruda has a higher medical education.

She has saved a lot of lives and not only of the SOF soldiers - she often has to save soldiers from other units. Once she even had to examine a prisoner of war.

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Quote: "Some soldiers say that we, the medics, like to inflict pain on them, like 'I'm already in pain, and you make it even worse'. And I ask them, if at least one of them stood in my place, when you know that a soldier is in pain, but you have to specifically make it worse in order to help and save his life.

How am I supposed to feel?" Last winter Ruda and her fellow soldiers worked on the Kherson front when locals told the soldiers about a four-month-old baby that was saved by his mom at the cost of her life. Ruda says there were several attempts to evacuate the boy along with the sister of his deceased mom, but the occupying authorities did not allow that.

After the occupiers settled the family in a local hospital, there was no news from the woman and her nephew. "Our guys went there at night to evacuate them from that hospital in another settlement. My commander approached me and asked me whether I could examine the baby.

Of course, I agreed," Ruda recalls. Ruda examined the baby in one of the houses. She undressed him and looked the baby over, and found a head wound and an injured toe.

"The baby is four months old but I tell it there is war in the country," Ruda says.Screenshot from the video published by the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine 

"I dressed the boy.

We spent some time outside, he was silent all the time. I told him that there is a war in our country, and that his mom died but he is loved, he has his dad and aunt. Later the deceased woman's sister came up to me and asked how old my kids are, even though I don't have any.

She said that during the three days they spent at the hospital the baby would not sleep, eat and would constantly whine, but I could handle him somehow," Ruda recalls. Ruda added that some civilians think the medics do not fight. "Yes, I don't shoot, I provide assistance; but we're fighting with death, which is my personal enemy.

I always say to the boys [soldiers - ed.] that their main goal is to make sure they get [injured] soldiers to me alive, and I'll take care of the rest," Ruda said.

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