Official Austria still refuses to call Putin a war criminal, refuses to sanction Russian oil and gas, can't find any spies. Yes, really. A selection of must-read journalism on Ukraine and Russia.
Yes, the reading is ghastly; but it is important to read, to respect those who bore witness to the atrocities. The comment section is not letting it be posted in its entirety.
Residents of Bucha told the BBC how some Russian soldiers shot civilians and others cried at the sight of children in the cellars.
- What's the date today?
- The seventh day of the war.
That's how the calendar has been kept at the hospital in Bucha since February 24, when the first rockets exploded in the sky. The 23-year-old Anastasia, a first-year intern at Kiev's Maternity Hospital No. 4, had not had time to leave for surgery in the capital and was already living in the three-story building of the local hospital for a week. She calls the invasion of Bucha, where 40,000 people lived, the time "when Ukraine became under Russia.
"The first day I was sitting in the basement of my house, hearing the sounds of gunshots and rockets, I decided, well, I'm a doctor, people need me. My mother was on her knees begging me not to leave. My father cried, but let me go with the words, "You are my pride."
Anastasia came into the hospital emergency room and said she was ready to work.
That same evening, they started bringing in 70 Ukrainian servicemen per day as a "conveyor belt. Accustomed to the obstetrics and gynecology department, Anastasia had to learn how to work in traumatology and purulent surgery.
"Ukrainian soldiers were raring to go back to war after a couple of days. There were two or three Russians among the wounded. We still respected the "neutral territory" rule then and treated everyone. The Russians' wounds were not serious, we treated them and handed them over to the Ukrainian military. They were almost always silent. Sometimes they would only say that they were deceived, that they did not know where they landed, they were told that there would be a special operation, they did not know that it was Ukraine... We were saying to the third one - well, think of something else already!
At first there were no civilians among the patients. Then the first civilian was brought to the hospital with a torn femur, and every day we admitted 15-20 people with wounds. In those days Anastasia kept a diary. "You wake up without an alarm clock, when even from the entrance you hear an ambulance or just a person who came wounded himself. You wake up. You put on your gloves. You pull on your mask. You check for "ears" [stethoscope] in your neck, a venflon [intravenous catheter] in your pocket, and a tourniquet. One thing on my mind was, "Well, let's go."
The point of no return, Anastasia says, for her was the second of March - when a four-year-old girl Katya was brought in from Gostomel with a head wound. "We realized then that there would be no more Russians in the hospital. It was a collapse for everyone. I turned my gaze back to that calf. And again the words of the Rashists were spinning in my head, that they don't shoot civilians, much less children... And somehow the surgeon's words echoed back to me: "Nastya, it's a child, take the yellow venflon".
Yes, the reading is ghastly; but it is important to read, to respect those who bore witness to the atrocities. The comment section is not letting it be posted in its entirety.
Residents of Bucha told the BBC how some Russian soldiers shot civilians and others cried at the sight of children in the cellars.
- What's the date today?
- The seventh day of the war.
That's how the calendar has been kept at the hospital in Bucha since February 24, when the first rockets exploded in the sky. The 23-year-old Anastasia, a first-year intern at Kiev's Maternity Hospital No. 4, had not had time to leave for surgery in the capital and was already living in the three-story building of the local hospital for a week. She calls the invasion of Bucha, where 40,000 people lived, the time "when Ukraine became under Russia.
"The first day I was sitting in the basement of my house, hearing the sounds of gunshots and rockets, I decided, well, I'm a doctor, people need me. My mother was on her knees begging me not to leave. My father cried, but let me go with the words, "You are my pride."
Anastasia came into the hospital emergency room and said she was ready to work.
That same evening, they started bringing in 70 Ukrainian servicemen per day as a "conveyor belt. Accustomed to the obstetrics and gynecology department, Anastasia had to learn how to work in traumatology and purulent surgery.
"Ukrainian soldiers were raring to go back to war after a couple of days. There were two or three Russians among the wounded. We still respected the "neutral territory" rule then and treated everyone. The Russians' wounds were not serious, we treated them and handed them over to the Ukrainian military. They were almost always silent. Sometimes they would only say that they were deceived, that they did not know where they landed, they were told that there would be a special operation, they did not know that it was Ukraine... We were saying to the third one - well, think of something else already!
At first there were no civilians among the patients. Then the first civilian was brought to the hospital with a torn femur, and every day we admitted 15-20 people with wounds. In those days Anastasia kept a diary. "You wake up without an alarm clock, when even from the entrance you hear an ambulance or just a person who came wounded himself. You wake up. You put on your gloves. You pull on your mask. You check for "ears" [stethoscope] in your neck, a venflon [intravenous catheter] in your pocket, and a tourniquet. One thing on my mind was, "Well, let's go."
The point of no return, Anastasia says, for her was the second of March - when a four-year-old girl Katya was brought in from Gostomel with a head wound. "We realized then that there would be no more Russians in the hospital. It was a collapse for everyone. I turned my gaze back to that calf. And again the words of the Rashists were spinning in my head, that they don't shoot civilians, much less children... And somehow the surgeon's words echoed back to me: "Nastya, it's a child, take the yellow venflon".