Ukrainian doctors describe delivering babies as Russia shelled the hospital

（单词翻译）

Ukrainian doctors describe delivering babies as Russia shelled the hospital

Transcript¹

TROSTYANETS, Ukraine — Walking through the heavily shelled second floor maternity² ward³, Dr. Hanna Shvetsova stops to stare at a glossy⁴ picture of a blond baby lying on a white pillow. It's the kind of image seen in countless⁵ ads for baby products.

It's now covered in bullet holes.

Six babies were delivered here at Trostyanets Hospital during the Russian occupation, including a pair of twins.

Shvetsova says most of those were conducted in the hallways, where they felt a bit safer working between two extra walls.

"I could have died three times with my patients," she says. "First, when the tank was shooting at us. Second, when the ceiling was falling."

She says the third was when she decided⁶ to walk a new mother home around the tanks, through a forest that she later learned was full of land mines.

The liberation of this small northern Ukrainian town just 22 miles from the Russian border after four weeks of occupation was not only a great victory for the people of Trostyanets, but a source of pride for the country.

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Yet, a month after the Russian forces left, local officials are only just beginning to understand the long-term impacts of the devastating⁷ Russian occupation.

The bridge into town remains⁸ split in two. The factories that employed thousands of workers have been destroyed.

And in a sign of what other liberated⁹ Ukrainian communities will face, the biggest challenge for Trostyanets is likely not rebuilding the town's infrastructure¹⁰, but recovering from the psychological scars of the occupation.

Thousands of jobs were lost

The first Russian troops arrived in Trostyanets on Feb. 24, day one of the war, as Russian forces started their initial push toward the west.

The Russians quickly took control of City Hall and the local police department.

Thousands of jobs were lost when the local chocolate factory and wood factory were destroyed. He said hundreds more were lost when the bombed-out train station stopped working.

Zhenya Skorohodov, an administrator¹¹ at City Hall, says it will likely take years to rebuild.

"It's very hard because the infrastructure of the city is almost destroyed," Skorohodov says. "So nowadays, we don't have any abilities to go back to normal life because it needs much financial resources to reconstruct the infrastructure subjects in the city."

Wrecked¹² infrastructure can be rebuilt, but deeper scars will last a long time

But Trostyanets' mayor, Yuriy Bova, is confident that they'll get the money. The infrastructure, he says, will be rebuilt. He worries more about the scars on people's minds.

Fifty-two residents were killed, including two children, before Ukrainian forces were able to wrest¹³ back control of the city. There are 18 residents still missing.

Bova says most everyone in the community lost a family member or a friend.

Some watched them die.

And some also had to live alongside the dead because they did not want to risk leaving their homes and getting killed by the Russians — or caught in the crossfire¹⁴.

"The trauma¹⁵ that people experienced will last for years," Bova tells NPR. "It's something that can't be cured by humanitarian¹⁶ aid."

Many fear the Russians' return

Many resident fear the Russians will return again. They imagine troops sitting and waiting on the border, which is just 30 minutes away.

"It's hard to imagine this happening again," says Myroslav Shylo, a local baker¹⁷. "I don't know if I could survive psychologically."

During the occupation, Shylo, 23, secretly secured flour so that he could make bread and stole fuel from the gas station so that he could deliver it to the neediest residents, including patients and doctors at the hospital.

On a recent day, hundreds of desperate residents were standing¹⁸ in line outside his shop waiting to get a loaf of bread for their families.

"You can't buy anything," Shylo says. "This is the only place you can get food."

Attacks tore through the hospital walls and windows

Nowhere is that trauma as apparent as at the local hospital.

The once state-of-the-art facility renovated¹⁹ last fall looks as if it could crumble²⁰ at any moment.

Two large slabs²¹ of the exterior²² walls — almost as big as the tanks that likely fired on them — have been torn off.

The head of the maternity ward, Dr. Tetiana Sydorenko, says staff continued to work throughout the occupation.

Without windows and in some places no walls, she says there was no escaping the cold. And the shelling was just incessant²³.

"It's hard to explain — the explosions. It was in your head. It was above your head. It was exploding inside of you. It was hell," she says.

Some of the last days of the occupation were also the worst, forcing patients and doctors to the basement.

Sydorenko says they had to use flashlights. She never wants to go back to that basement.

"This is pain. It was just horrible," she says. "I don't want to go down there. I don't want to remember. It's psychologically difficult."

Dr. Shvetsova says the staff and patients cried a lot — and laughed when they could.

She says they had a job to do and figured out ways to keep doing it.

"One baby was born in the bomb shelter during the heavy fighting. Everyone got quiet waiting to hear the child. When she finally cried — everyone cheered."

She said it was the one moment when everyone forgot about the shelling.

They named her Daria.