Highlights
- Bucha was home to nearly 37,000 in Ukraine’s Kyiv Oblast, used as strategic base by Russian forces
- Dr Mariia Mykytiuk sent her kids to Australia, but chose to remain in Bucha to treat animals, humans
- Dr Mykytiuk says she narrowly escaped a sniper attack and rape while doing her job
Three weeks ago, Mariia Mykytiuk flew to Australia, where her children – evacuated from the Ukrainian city of Bucha, the theatre of the Russia-Ukraine war in March – had been waiting for her. The veterinarian didn’t leave Bucha in the thick of military action because sick animals and people in her clinic needed her.
Bucha is a city in Ukraine’s Kyiv Oblast with proximately 37,000 residents. This city was used as a strategic base by the Russian forces to advance towards Kyiv.
After 33 days of occupation, Bucha became a symbol of the atrocities of the war when images of dead civilians lying strewn on roadsides travelled around the world. Russia, however, claimed the photos and videos from Bucha were fake, and the bodies were planted after its forces left.
On the evening of February 23, Dr Mykytiuk recalls that she had planned to take her children to their after-school activities and meet a friend for coffee. But she woke up in a completely different world.
“You look out the window and instead of neighbours on the streets, you see tanks, military vehicles, you hear terrible sounds. And the next day you see the corpses of people you knew lying on the road. Life has changed so dramatically, and you had to adapt to it very quickly,” she recollects memories from the early days of the war.
Dr Mykytiuk has been living in Bucha since the age of five, when her family moved there from Sakhalin (a Russian island in the Pacific Ocean). She recalls how beautiful, comfortable and safe her city was before the war.
“Our city was very green, lots of trees and flowers. It was built especially for families with children. We always held some festivals and competitions; people gathered in the park on weekends. Everyone greeted each other and knew each other,” the vet tells SBS Russian.
A veterinary surgeon, she ran the only vet clinic in their region that treated and rehabilitated wild animals and birds. At the time of the Russian invasion, there were 300 animals under her care: foxes, hedgehogs, squirrels, woodpeckers, crows. They had to be kept warm, fed, and treated, while there was no central heating, water and electricity in Bucha. Food and medicine were also running out.
Photographs from the streets of Bucha during the Russian occupation, courtesy of Mariia Mykytiuk Source: Photo supplied by M. Mykytiuk
“First of all, I had to save all those animals. My second task was to help the pets, mostly dogs and cats left by their owners who evacuated. I’m a veterinarian and it was my duty to help them.
“On top of that, I had to take care of humans too. After a couple of weeks in cold and damp basements with temperatures dipping to minus 15 degrees, people started to get sick. I began to treat them,” Dr Mykytiuk says.
She admits that while she had no legal right to provide medical care to humans, Dr Mykytiuk broke protocol since there were no other doctors in her area. There was also a shortage of medication for humans, so she had no choice but to use veterinary drugs for them.
“People started getting colds, pneumonia, inflammation of the kidneys. There were some extreme cases, like two young drug addicts suffered severe withdrawal symptoms. I had never dealt with such cases, but I needed to save them. So I put them on drips with saline for seven days to help with the withdrawal symptoms,” says Dr Mykytiuk.
“From a friendly and joyful city, Bucha city has turned into a city of fear,” Dr Mykytiuk says as she recalls every step out into the street was associated with a risk to her life due to the constant military action.
Mariia Mykytiuk, veterinarian from Bucha Source: Photo supplied by Maria Mykytiuk
But as she had to feed the sick animals and find medication, she “reasonably decided that only she would go out from the basement to bring everything people needed”.
“To get to my clinic, I had to go through three or four checkpoints of the Russian military. At each post they asked if I had a phone with me, then they searched me very rudely. It was important for me not to show how scared I was, because I was home, it was my city,” Dr Mykytiuk recalls.
During one of these trips, she says that she heard a shutter click, turned around and just about 30 meters away, saw a sniper in a window with a weapon pointed at her. She took off her backpack very slowly, took out dog food from it and poured it on the ground. Then she counted to 16, waiting to be shot.
“He didn’t shoot me but the next day, my girlfriend, who was returning after visiting her mum, was killed by a bullet in the forehead at the same place. Every day I ask myself one question: ‘What did this sniper see in his scope when he aimed at the head of this young and beautiful woman?’ I have no answer,” Dr Mykytiuk adds woefully.
Until April 10, very few people managed to leave the city alive as all cars on the way out came under fire. From March 10 to March 16, a green corridor was opened, when Dr Mykytiuk’s two children and her parents were able to leave.
Mariia says that she can't find answers to many questions about why Russian soldiers tortured and killed civilians in her city Source: Supplied by M.Mykytiuk
But she decided to stay, because she couldn’t leave those who needed her help.
“I have 300 animals, I have patients, I just don’t have the right to die,” she repeated to herself in the most terrifying moments.
And there were many such moments.
“The Russian military came to our houses and clinic several times for inspection, and on one of these visits, I clearly understood that they wanted to rape me. But at that moment, weapons were found in a neighbouring house, so the soldiers were called there, and that saved me. From that time on, I always wanted to find a grenade on the street so that, if this happened again, I could blow myself and him up,” Dr Mykytiuk said.
During one of these checks in the clinic, the Russian soldiers opened all the enclosures and half of the animals and birds fled. Dr Mykytiuk says that she was afraid to argue with them but managed to save the rest of the animals.
“I tried very hard to hold on and cheer everyone up. I think I was on adrenaline all the time, and in the evenings, I had cramps in all my muscles and cried a lot. I also couldn’t hold back my tears when an elderly couple in their 80s came to me, and said they were kicked out of the house by Russian soldiers. The old gentleman had pneumonia and they barely made it to my place in the cold. I was physically ill from such injustice and resentment for them,” Dr Mykytiuk tells SBS Russian.
In the mornings, the neighbours prepared tea on a fire for her Source: Photo supplied by M. Mykytiuk
In this series of nightmarish days filled with fear and pain, there were also some bright moments.
Dr Mykytiuk recalls how in the morning her neighbours in the basement prepared tea for her on a fire and life seemed “almost normal”.
In the first few days after the de-occupation, neighbours and their relatives started to come to her with chocolates, flowers and words of gratitude.
“On the very first day after the Russian military had left our city, an 83-year-old man came to me, whom I had treated for pneumonia with veterinary drugs. It was the beginning of April, and the first flowers of the season had just started to bloom. He picked a bouquet of these flowers for me. It warmed my heart immensely, I even took a picture of him which I will keep with me as a memory of this moment for the rest of my life,” Dr Mikytiuk says.
Now, Mariia Mykytiuk and her children will live in Sydney, but as soon as Bucha becomes safe again, she plans to return home.
An elderly gentleman whom Mariia was treating for pneumonia brought her wildflowers Source: Photo supplied by Maria Mykytiuk
“Back then during the occupation, I made a decision not in favour of my children that they had to be evacuated without me. Now, I have to think about them, because it is dangerous for them to live in Bucha for the time being. My son told me that he used to feel like a plant in a greenhouse that everyone looked after, but now he feels like a tumbleweed. The psychological trauma of my children is another thing that I can’t get over yet.
“But I will definitely return to Bucha, to my clinic, my animals, my whole life is there. I just want my world returned to me,” Dr Mykytiuk signs off.
