Have you spent the last few weeks in Poland resting?
More like recruiting people. Two hundred people applied, and a few will go with us. I am not persuading anyone to do anything, because this decision requires absolute certainty. If someone tells me that in two or three months they will come, because now they have to sort things out here, I know that they will never come. When I see that someone wants to escape from problems at home, I cut off the conversation. Those who do not have the right motivations are a danger to themselves and others at the front. There is no room for hesitation here. [It’s the same with] people who are looking for adrenaline or adventure in war.
Do you feel responsible for your people?
Yes, I feel responsible for them like a father. That’s why I can’t take anyone on the team who isn’t aware of the risks. Taking someone unprepared, I would be risking his life. You know, a lot of people still romanticize war. They think they will be heroes fighting evil. And war itself is full of evil.
What does your mission look like on a daily basis?
In this job, you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Will you be able to sleep, bathe, eat? Everything is uncertain. We don’t even know where we will be—whether on the front line with the soldiers, because there are no medics, or in the place where the wounded are brought and we pass them on, or at the rear. We are where we are needed.
Do you see it as a job or a mission?
It’s not a job because I don’t make money from it. It is possible that in a moment I will have to choose between earning money in Poland and being at the front. By profession, I am an official whose task is to contact the media. I have a comfortable, good, stable job. I could send a donation to the East once in a while; I wouldn’t have to take any chances. But I cannot do otherwise.
I am setting up a foundation—I hope that the donations will be enough for us to live on. My mission, in addition to saving people, is to inform [others] about what is happening in the war. I think it’s important to talk about this war as much as possible.
Do you feel that the information we receive about the war is not enough? That it’s stopped evoking emotions in us?
My team and I have been accused of publishing information that could put other medics at risk. It was commented that we show too much. But every image that [we send into the world] is authorized by the Ukrainian army. We have been in this war for almost 10 years—we know what can be shown and what cannot. We don’t want it to be more violent. It just has to be a real.
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