01/23/2026

“There are four Mondays left until spring.” I read this a few days ago, on Facebook. Ukrainians are really looking forward to spring. She knows about it and will definitely come. Then it will become easier.

It’s very difficult in Ukraine. But those in the rear are trying to support those at the front.

A female volunteer with two twin daughters lives in Kyiv. I am subscribed to her page. She talked about the scary nights in the capital. Russian drones fly into their apartment building. And then she immediately asks to help the front. And shows how she and her friends pack warm clothes for the military into cars.

I tell my older German friend, whom I call Miss Marple, how incredible Ukrainians are. How strong they are inside and how they know how to joke when things are tough. I tell her that Ukrainians are impossible to beat.

She responds with a strange phrase. I translate this phrase as “only the strong can laugh in the basement.” This is 100% about Ukrainians.

This morning, a woman named Natalia wrote:

“It’s so hot outside – minus 7!”

Her house has been without light and heating for several days.

She was supported by another Natalia, who replied:

“Here I am, running to work and thinking the same thing – it’s getting warmer outside.”

Both Natalias are from Mariupol. They currently live in different cities of Ukraine. One is a teacher, works with children in a kindergarten, and the other is a doctor and treats people.

Hundreds of thousands of people: utility workers, energy workers, rescuers, salespeople, drivers, bakers, nurses, entrepreneurs and others go to work in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Zaporizhia, Lviv.

Many people have no heat or light in their homes, and the Russian Federation attacks Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles every day. But Ukrainians, despite the shelling, the cold, and insane fatigue, are doing everything they can to keep Ukraine alive.

And below is the story about my Ukrainian Mariupol and amazing people who are truly impossible to defeat.

***

Mariupol, March, 2022.

Their ambulance didn’t always drive through glass on the ground and concrete slabs. They got out of the car and walked. They didn’t pray. On the contrary, they cursed with their last words. And they repeated it like a spell: “At least it doesn’t fly here again!”

Mariupol, mid-March, broken windows, red-hot houses, black soot and ash falling from above onto the bright swings and the dim ground.

Apocalypse in a single city and hungry, unwashed, angry, scared angels, wearing jackets with the words “Emergency Medicine” written on them.

They are a couple in love and try not to leave together. It’s like a bad omen. Death seems to punish for love. The death of other people.

A man lies in the middle of the yard, his wife and young daughter above him. They ask: “Look, what’s wrong with him? He’s not moving and not responding.”

Paramedics turn the man onto his back. He has no face. Mother and daughter don’t believe it.

They ask: “Maybe we were mistaken? Maybe it’s not him? Ours is definitely alive. He went out for five minutes to warm the kettle on the fire. We heard a hissing. This is some kind of nonsense. It can’t be like that.”

“Maybe,” the young paramedic replies. His partner is silent. She’s afraid to cry.

Just yesterday, a man brought his wife to the ambulance station. He was driving at a tremendous speed. He was shouting out the open window, “Help, hurry up! Please!”

The woman was pulled out of the car. She was dead.

The man begged, fell to his knees, asked to be given an injection and revived. Everyone knew they couldn’t, but they started resuscitation.

Three twenty-year-old paramedics tried to bring a dead woman back to life. Dead for at least an hour. She was killed by a shell fragment.

This woman’s husband was dying nearby. From despair. The paramedics didn’t know how to tell him that she was gone. They couldn’t find the words. He couldn’t hear them. He sat over his wife and rocked from side to side.

“This can’t happen.” They had heard those words many times in this cold March. Every death was a catastrophe. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand catastrophes that shouldn’t happen. People were dying because of this stinking war.

The dead were increasingly being brought to the hospital. The dead were piled up in basements. Or simply left on the street nearby.

The doctors didn’t bury the dead. They tried to save the living.

The dead occupied all the space in the city. They displaced the living inhabitants. Mariupol became a ghost town.

One day, the parents brought the child in and carefully laid him on an icy couch in the corner of their waiting room.

The parents immediately believed the doctors. Their daughter was not breathing. The woman with dead eyes and the man with a confused face did not cry. They sat next to each other, looked at their daughter, stroked her head and warmed her little hands.

A bomb fell on the street nearby. The airstrike collapsed the surrounding houses. Their house stood. They survived. Everyone except their daughter.

“We will come to you. Don’t be afraid, little one. You won’t be alone there. Wait, we will definitely come to you.”

Why is the hum of an airplane the most disgusting sound in the world?

On March 18, rioters took away the remaining vehicles and medicines at the Mariupol ambulance station.

Paramedics could no longer save people.

The last angels in jackets with the words “Emergency Medicine” were walking out of the city.

***

This was an interview in Zaporizhia, in the summer of 2022, with a very young guy and a girl from Mariupol. They loved each other, managed to get out of the Mariupol hell, and planned to continue working in the ambulance of any Ukrainian city.

https://www.obozrevatel.com/ukr/novosti-obschestvo/ukraintsiv-nemozhlivo-peremogti.htm