A Ukrainian doctor documented her lifesaving work in war-torn Mariupol using a micro-data card that was later smuggled out of the country with a tampon by daring journalists.
Yuliia Paievska, who was eventually captured by Russian soldiers, gets body cams, originally for a Netflix documentary invincible gamean international sporting event for wounded or veterans founded by Prince Harry of the United Kingdom.
But when Russian troops invaded the country, she focused her footage on efforts to rescue wounded Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians at a military hospital in the besieged city.
A video from March 10 showed two Russian soldiers, including one in a wheelchair, being taken out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier.
A Ukrainian soldier then cursed the Russian army, prompting Paievska to respond.
“Calm down, calm down,” she said.
“Are you going to treat the Russians?” a woman asked her next.
“They won’t be so nice to us,” Peyevska replied. “But I can’t do that. They’re prisoners of war.”
Paievska—better known in Ukraine as Taira, where she helped train the country’s volunteer medical team—successfully made the video available to Associated Press reporters on March 15, one of whom took it with him Escaped into tampons.
A day later, the 53-year-old doctor and her driver were arrested by Russian troops.
On March 21, a news broadcast in Russia then announced her arrest — disheveled while reading a statement calling for an end to the war, when a voiceover accused her colleague of being a Nazi.
Russia believes Peyevska is allied with the nationalist Azov Battalion, a volunteer militia formed in 2014 that has fought Russian troops in the Donbas region.
Paievska is now one of hundreds of local officials, journalists and other Ukrainians who have been kidnapped or captured by Russian forces.
The doctor’s plight is being shared with the world as Mariupol falters into the hands of the Russian military, which said on Thursday that 1,730 Ukrainian soldiers have been at the port city’s blasted steel plant since Monday. surrender.
A few weeks before her arrest, Paievska documented herself caring for an open wound on the head of a Ukrainian soldier on February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion.
She later ordered her colleagues to help a Russian soldier on February 26 by giving him a blanket while calling the young fighter “Sunshine,” a nickname she often used when treating the wounded.
“You’re taking care of me,” the Russian soldier told her.
“We treat everyone equally,” Peyevska replied.
The last known footage of Paievska, taken on March 9, shows her sitting next to her driver Serhiy, who also later disappeared.
“Two weeks of war, Mariupol under siege,” she said in the clip.
The Invictus Games page shared a post asking for Paievska’s help.
“Since the start of the Russian invasion in 2014, Taira has saved the lives of more than 500 Ukrainian military personnel,” the website reads. “It is her own life that needs to be saved now.”
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