I n the weeks before he was taken prisoner, Demkiv was constantly worrying about his family: his wife, Anna, and their two children, aged 11 and 8. I spoke with several members of a support group formed by the relatives to seek the medics’ release. Demkiv and his colleagues were not harmed, but their relatives fear for their well-being. Ukraine blames the massacre on Russia and wants it investigated as a war crime. More than that, it suggests that Russia is violating humanitarian laws that apply to prisoners of war about food, hygiene, and access to the Red Cross, as well as subjecting them to intimidation and public curiosity.Ĭompounding these concerns, in July a mysterious explosion killed more than 50 POWs at Olenivka. First, it shows Russia’s willingness to imprison noncombatant Ukrainians in areas it has captured, either to hold them as bargaining chips for prisoner swaps or to put them to work under duress. The experience of Demkiv and his colleagues is revealing on a number of levels. Demkiv was taken prisoner in mid-April, along with 77 other doctors and hospital staff, and has been held ever since at a complex called Olenivka in the Russian-occupied east. The price of that dedication was his eventual capture. Demkiv stayed at work even when Russians bombed the hospital itself, scattering broken glass over a patient unconscious on the operating table. His days were an endless succession of limb amputations and other lifesaving interventions, the sound of Russia’s bombardment of the city always in the background. For weeks, Demkiv hardly left the operating theater. The hospital took in 20 wounded on the first day of the war. W hen Russia’s siege of Mariupol began in February, Ivan Demkiv was the senior surgeon at a military hospital known simply by its number: 555.
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