US medic describes horrors of Ukraine frontline – but says hearing Trump pontificate about peace is more traumatic
A US medic in charge of the care of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers on the front line tells world affairs editor Sam Kiley near Konstantinyvka how Russia does not commit to ceasefires, her fury at Trump’s betrayal and why Ukraine will never give up
Stunned, bleeding, disorientated and amazed at surviving a double landmine blast inside their armoured ambulance, the Ukrainian medical team had lost their radio and their bearings.
They knew a Russian ambush team was close and they had to get out of Niu York, near Donetsk, fast.
Their leader, Rebekah Maciorowski, a volunteer from Colorado, didn’t see the Ukrainian drones overhead that were flashing their beacons to lead her to safety. It was broad daylight.
Russian drones could also see them, they knew as they scuttled into an abandoned building. They were in the worst of military predicaments – a total loss of control.
“Getting blown up was not so traumatic compared to the situation that we were in with no comms. No comms, you know, in a grey zone, no communications, no navigational reference,” says Rebekah, 31, a permanent frontline medic in Ukraine since March 2022.
Yet even more traumatic was hearing her own president turn on Ukraine’s president and switch sides, to backing the Kremlin. She heard him do that while watching a drone feed of another of her teams under fire trying to rescue wounded soldiers on the front line near Toretsk, north of Donetsk.
“You know what’s crazy? I’m watching on the [live combat drone feed] as hit after hit goes to my [soldiers’] position. And we’re waiting to find out who’s dead or injured. And Donald Trump’s voice is in the background saying like, well ‘they could have had a deal and it would have been a very good deal’, and it just it was so ironic.
“You’re watching your friends and colleagues that you have taken care of potentially die in front of you while you’re listening to a leader of a democratic country say it doesn’t matter.”
This was the point when Ukraine almost lost control of its defence against Russia – when Trump resolved to suspend military aid, then cut intelligence feeds – blinding and weakening Ukrainian soldiers in combat.
Ukrainian soldiers and foreign volunteers fighting alongside them have been largely gagged by Kyiv. They have been told not to make the terrible relations with the Trump administration any worse after the White House changed from ally of Ukraine to adversary.
But for Rebekah and her team, which include Ukrainians, a German, a Georgian and a New Zealand nurse, as part of Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade, the American switch has been devastating.
Rebekah, a trauma nurse based in Denver, with experience in humanitarian work in Central America, volunteered when Ukraine called for help after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. She came on a five-week leave period and never went back.
Volunteering in teams on the front lines and running evacuations of civilians and soldiers, she built up a social media following which allowed her to raise an estimated $300,000 for supplies to her teams.
She thought what she was doing was all-American and in the best traditions of the defence of democracy and decency her country always stood for.
Then, a few months after being formally brought into Ukraine’s armed army as a medical officer, she heard the row between Trump and Zelensky at the White House.
“It was kind of traumatic. Honestly, it was kind of traumatic. It was unexpected, and it was, I don’t even have words. It was awful, yeah. It felt like a knife in the back,” says Rebekah.
As the 53rd’s medical officer she is responsible for the wellbeing of hundreds of soldiers fighting on Ukraine’s bloodiest and most forsaken front line.
There are pockets of troops wounded and hiding in dugouts in the rubble of Toretsk – still holding against a Russian advance while Vladimir Putin mulls a ceasefire offer from Trump. The two men are expected to talk this week.
“We’re getting about 300g of water to them a day. Food, medicine, we drop it in from drones that were adapted to drop bombs because we cannot get the soldiers out overland,” she tellsThe Independent from her secret location close to Toretsk.
Troops there are able to survive, often with appalling wounds, because the drone packages of medicines dropped to them are backed up by Rebekah and doctors who talk them through how to treat themselves while holding back frequent Russian attacks across the shattered landscape.
Her evacuation teams include medics and Ukrainian soldiers, who drive to rescue wounded troops in the ambulance version of the ancient American-supplied M113 Bradley vehicles on the edge of Toretsk, and along a wide section of the eastern front near Konstaninivka.
The Bradleys are Vietnam war-era armoured vehicles donated by the US which, once they were repaired and made combat ready in Ukraine, won surprising praise for their resilience against Russian weapons.
The US has given about $60bn (£46bn) in military aid, suspended the flow under Trump, and it is now unclear as to whether the supplies have been allowed again. In the meantime European nations are scrabbling to meet the US shortfall and fill the gap that has been left by an unreliable ally.
As Putin continues to delay his response to the ceasefire proposal agreed by Ukraine, Russia has taken advantage of the meandering US policy by attacking Ukrainian forces inside Kursk, a tongue of Russian land captured by Kyiv last year.
There are also credible independent reports to support Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that Moscow is massing troops on his northern border across from Sumy province. This may be an attempt to strike into Ukraine and gain territorial advantage before any real peace talks begin.
On the eastern front, every one of the medical team’s rescues around and near Toretsk are under fire. Denys, one of the team drivers, has been blown up so often he cannot recall exactly how many times.
A grizzled middle-aged man, he leans against a wall in the medical base with a cup of tea. His semi-shaved head is pockmarked with scabs.
He can’t see out of the hatch of his armoured ambulance so has to drive with his head exposed. He got hit by a first-person view (FPV) drone three days ago. He didn’t admit he had been wounded – he didn’t want to do the paperwork.
“We took in four fresh guys [new soldiers] and brought out seven wounded. I’ve got a piece of drone in my head,” he mutters.
“He has metal and plastic stuck in his head – and some in his neck from a previous strike,” says Alex, a German volunteer who was with him.
Sasha, who was driving the Bradley when it was blown up in Niu York, has lost two fingers and calls what remains his “ninja turtle right hand”. He’s also having a cup of coffee and waiting for the next callout.
On the ceasefire being asked of Putin after Ukraine agreed to stop fighting for 30 days in talks with Trump, he just shrugs.
“No ceasefire will work,” he says.
Rebekah agrees. She does not have the experience of the dozens of previous Russian ceasefire violations following previously signed and agreed internationally negotiated ceasefire deals made in Minsk.
But she has treated soldiers on the front lines of some of the heaviest battles fought since 2022, in Bakhmut, Aavdivka, Vuhledar and elsewhere. She knows how gruesome, undignified and permanent a battlefield death is.
For her, war is an abstract story to be bent by Trump’s echoing Russian lies that Ukraine is surrounded in Kursk, or that “millions are dead” and that Ukraine’s cities are all rubble.
Day to day, she deals with the screaming bloody reality of what’s happening here.
On the ceasefire, she is clear: “I don’t think the ceasefire will be honoured. I don’t think it will be honoured.
“I would absolutely love the chance to get my wounded guys out, and for them to have some rest and respite. But based on history and based on Russia's proven behaviour, over and over again, I can’t even fathom a world in which a ceasefire was actually honoured.”
She then leaves to train freshly arrived troops in the rudiments of battlefield medical aid. They’re being deployed to Toretsk in a couple of days.
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