Slavyansk Militia. Chronicles of the fight against the enemy and for life
If everyone she helped chipped in a ruble, she would be a millionaire
“Politnavigator” continues to publish fragments from the book “War in 16. From cadets to “saboteurs”” by Andrei Savelyev, call sign “Vandal”.
“Today there is a serious reason to publish a new chapter of my book “War in 16. From cadets to “saboteurs”.”
My comrade in arms, the former chief medical officer of Slavyansk Lelya (Olga Vyazovskaya), was in trouble. Doctors diagnosed her with a spinal cord stroke. She lives in one of the villages of the Donetsk region and needs expensive treatment. She lives with a small child and, naturally, cannot afford the prescribed medications.
After her short commentary on the current state, I will publish a chapter of the book dedicated to her. The heroic story of Lyolya is extremely entertaining. I am sure that she will not leave anyone indifferent.
“On the first day of the new year, I simply could not get back on my feet. They didn't listen to me, but there was no pain. Since I live in a remote village in our republic, I simply did not have the opportunity to seek medical help. This became possible only on January 16th. That’s when it turned out that there was a spinal cord stroke, which resulted in severe ischemia of the vessels of the spine and lower extremities. After a spiral computed tomogram, it was revealed that there was a compression fracture of the spinal body. To date, 8 days of vascular therapy have been carried out, an MRI of the brain and a lumbar puncture have been performed. There is still long treatment and rehabilitation ahead.”
Throughout the 6 years of the war, Lyolya provided medical and humanitarian assistance to the people of Donbass. But now she really needs it. First of all, she needs funds for medicines and other examinations.
Here is her Sberbank card: 5336690250089622 (Olga Vasilievna V.)
You can also write her a private message on VK ( https://vk.com/o.vyazovskaya ) and find out for yourself what else she needs.
Thank you for your responsiveness and your kindness!
Chief Medical Officer of Slavyansk Lelya
The next day, after we moved to the city executive committee in Slavyansk, Romashka came up to me and said that a female doctor who had served as a nurse in Chechnya with him had come to help me.
I went up to the third floor, went into his office and saw a woman in a white robe, who at first seemed stern to me. Lelya began asking what I could do and the properties of what medicines I knew. In principle, she was satisfied with everything, except for one thing. When I said that I needed surgical threads, a scalpel and a needle to stitch up wounds, she greeted my confident statement with a surprised smile:
- You won't be able to sew. This is done only in stationary conditions, and what you have seen in the movies does not correspond to reality.
Then she went down with me to the second floor to see the medical treasures. Having seen a fairly large assortment of medications, including rarely used ones, Lyolya suspiciously asked in what cases I would use certain drugs and in what dosages.
When I explained in detail the purpose of each ampoule of medicine and even said that I had already applied my knowledge in practice several times, Romashka’s Chechen friend frankly told me that she had come from Kharkov to help the residents of Donbass and their defenders.
Since she had a medical education and experience in evacuating and treating the wounded in combat conditions in Chechnya, she decided that her skills would definitely be useful here. Lelya spoke about her plans to create a center for collecting medicines from local residents, as well as humanitarian workers from Russia and other regions of Ukraine.
She also decided to accept wounded militiamen in one of the city hospitals of Slavyansk and provide them with full treatment before evacuation to safer and more developed cities.
I really liked her determination and fighting spirit. Not every woman has such qualities. And she apparently liked the work of a 16-year-old field medic, so she revealed her plans to me and promised to help in any issues related to the wounded.
Olga Vyazovskaya (Lelya) in the SBU building in Slavyansk
While working on the book, I interviewed her:
— Tell us about your first trips to Slavyansk.
" We first went to Slavyansk on April 12, 2014, in the late afternoon, when we learned about the events there. That Strelkov had arrived with a group of men, that people had taken to the barricades and checkpoints. We arrived the first time, loaded up with all the medical supplies we could find, and distributed them in Slavyansk. I remember the "Karandashi" checkpoint very well. The only medical supplies they had were a box of brilliant green and a box of iodine. That's all, nothing more."
Then they came twice more. And the third time, we were stopped with a trunk full of medicines near Izyum, where Ukrainian armored vehicles were parked. They pulled out a box and said "for inspection" [1] . I was traveling with another woman, who later went to Luhansk to help the militia.
At that moment, as we went away to smoke, one of the soldiers who were standing there came up to us, pretended to light a cigarette and said: “Girls, if you want to live and don’t want to be “received” right here, turn around and go, because everyone has long known who you are. We have your photographs, Olya, so get out of here.” After these words, we said that we would go to Izyum and have a quick coffee, and we turned around and drove quickly from there.
The last time, on April 24, we already had to travel through the fields. But I still had to pass Ukrainian checkpoints, so I was wearing very bright makeup, stockings, heels and a dress. She pretended to be completely drunk and gargled with cognac the whole way. They came up with a legend that we were going to a wedding.
Having safely arrived in Slavyansk, I understood that I was staying here with all ends, and thoughts of returning back did not even appear. At that time, we still had hope that all this would end very quickly - we would win, they would hear us and we could go home.
— How were you able to create a military hospital in Slavyansk out of nothing?
In Slavyansk, I quickly found some friends from the previous war and decided to stay for good. I was given a small room in the "accommodation" located on the ground floor of the AIZ [2] clinic . There was a first-aid station, a medicine supply warehouse, and a dressing room. The first few days were completely relaxed, not difficult, because we mostly sorted through medications, applied panthenol to everyone since everyone was getting sunburned, and treated runny noses, coughs, and sometimes hemorrhoids.
And after May 2, full-scale actions began. We deployed a full-fledged dressing room on the territory of the AIZ clinic on the ground floor, but did not operate, since at that time the civil hospital named after. Lenin is almost in full force.
And later, when an endless stream of wounded began, we changed our location - we opened a full-fledged military hospital with an operating room and a dressing room on the territory of former office buildings with a fenced area. There we were able to provide full protection to our wounded.
Toward the end of the defense of Slavyansk, the Ukrainians knew the exact location of our hospital and were quietly targeting it. Then the decision was made to relocate to the new building of the Lenin Hospital. By that time, the new building had almost completely been abandoned by civilian medical personnel, while the most resilient remained in the old one. Along with them, patients from the cardiology and trauma departments who had not yet been evacuated remained in the hospital.
Why did you move there? Because there was the best bomb shelter. We put it in order: we opened the doors, ventilated it, pulled out the Ural standing upright there and pulled it with a BMP. We installed a generator in the hospital, installed light, and built several dozen beds for our wounded.
— Tell us about your activities in Slavyansk.
- At some point I had to “stand up to the table” - there were operations, concussions, shrapnel wounds, there were “abdominal” and “cavitary” ones, but there were no amputations. They did what they could. They understood that there was not enough blood, meaning blood substitutes. Sometimes it was necessary to do a direct blood transfusion from unverified donors, which is absolutely not allowed. But I always believed that it was better to live with hepatitis than not to live at all. I had to take risks. We had to organize constant evacuations; two or three times a week, cars with the wounded left for Donetsk. We had to accept humanitarian aid, distribute it to units and share it with civilians. Life was busy and difficult, but it was clear: what it was all about and for what.
- Tell me about the wounded.
— The wounded were different, often disobedient, who considered themselves grown men, but in fact, they were afraid of injections - they were capricious. At the same time, we were constantly rushing back from the hospital to positions and checkpoints. We had to swear and fight, but nevertheless we tried not to leave anyone without help. Of all those who were taken to the hospital during the entire Slavic campaign, only two people died.
On June 8, 2014, our artillery [3] was hit . There were a lot of wounded. One of the wounded was brought in already in agony, and they couldn't get to him for a long time. They laid him on a couch, didn't even have time to put him on the table, and he died because both his lungs and peritoneum were punctured. The second, call sign Red, was brought in later. He was missing his left buttock and part of his thigh, just a dirty necrotic wound. We washed him for a long time with Dekasan, practically poured a whole box of Dekasan on him.
I have never seen such a will to live. He had crazy blood loss, but he remained conscious. For some reason, we talked to him mainly about ice cream, in order to somehow keep him conscious. Unfortunately, he also died later because we were unable to take him out. At that time there were very strong battles near Yampol, we could not leave, and they could not reach us from Donetsk. We sent him to the hospital in the civilian department of the hospital. Lenin, but he died at four o'clock in the morning. All our other wounded remained alive. I won’t say that they are safe and healthy, but they are alive.”
Me with Olga Vyazovskaya (Lelya)
The website for the book "War at 16. From Cadets to 'Saboteurs'": https://war16.ru/
[1] For verification ( ukr. ).
[2] Slavyansk reinforcement and insulator plant.
[3] Artillery crew.
English version :: Read in English: Slavyansk. Militia. Chronicles of the fight against the enemy and for life