We are forced to choose who we save, Ukrainian combat medic says

Rina Reznik, a teacher-turned-medic, has been saving lives on the Ukrainian frontline since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Transcript

00:00Rina Reznik, Ukrainian combat medic, says she does not remember her life before February

00:062022.

00:08When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Rina was studying biology in Kharkiv.

00:12She has spent the past almost three years at the front lines rescuing Ukrainian soldiers.

00:18The amount of casualties now is enormous.

00:22You simply cannot remember the faces of people you were working on till the day.

00:29Sometimes it could be like a hundred of them in a day, and a lot of them have really huge

00:36wounds, really a lot of fractures, and you cannot save everyone.

00:45You cannot use a lot of resources because every minute another portion of casualties

00:52could come.

00:53And the most scary word in Ukrainian military doctor vocabulary is triage.

01:03It's a thing that you must choose who you will be saving now and who will wait.

01:10Wounded soldiers often don't have this precious time, Rina says, as she explains that all

01:15medical evacuations from the front lines are being targeted and attacked by Russian forces,

01:20which means sometimes it can take days to evacuate the wounded.

01:25I really want to pay attention about how fatigued we are in this war, soldiers, surgeons, officers,

01:33so on, all of the people that connect their life with war completely, but it simply doesn't

01:42matter because we don't have an ability to rest, no one of us.

01:48The only ability to rest is to get wounded in this war and after it to get physical rehabilitation.

01:58As Russia's war against Ukraine shows, no sign of ending, soldiers and medics cannot

02:03yet get more time to rest and recover.