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Modern-day Florence Nightingales leave kids for months to save Ukrainian troops

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Modern-day Florence Nightingales leave kids for months to save Ukrainian troops
Modern-day Florence Nightingales leave kids for months to save Ukrainian troops

MODERN-day Florence Nightingales go for months without seeing their kids as they save soldiers’ lives in Ukraine.

Hero mums and dads who crew Ukraine’s battle ambulances work three months at the front with just ten days’ leave to see their little ones.

Hero doc Oksana Troyan quit her job in a city hospital to work with the front-line ambulance team run by the charity MOAS qhiddzirdiddprw
Hero doc Oksana Troyan quit her job in a city hospital to work with the front-line ambulance team run by the charity MOASCredit: Dan Charity
Oksana said the hardest thing about her new role was not the bombs or bullets, nor the gruesome battle wounds, but 'the fear that my son is growing up without me'
Oksana said the hardest thing about her new role was not the bombs or bullets, nor the gruesome battle wounds, but 'the fear that my son is growing up without me'Credit: Dan Charity

But they endure the heart-wrenching absences to give their kids a better future – in a country free from Russian tyranny.

Hero doc Oksana Troyan quit her job in a city hospital to work with the front-line ambulance team run by the charity MOAS.

She said the hardest thing about her new role was not the bombs or bullets, nor the gruesome battle wounds she treats, but “the fear that my son is growing up without me”.

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Sometimes Oksana’s work on the ambulances takes her back to her home town, where her six-year-old son Ehor lives with his dad Andriy.

Oksana, 33, said: “The first time it happened I called Ehor’s nanny and asked her to bring him to the hospital where we were dropping off a wounded soldier, just so that I could hug him for five minutes.”

Really hard

She added: “If we have no patients, then I always try to call and read him a bedtime story.”

The photos on her phone are a mix of soldiers’ wounds and screen grabs of calls with Ehor.

Paramedic Natalia Tarasuyk, 37, said she had to go eight months without seeing her ten-year-old son Oleksandr, who lives with his grandmother.

The base where she is living has scarce running water, but power and decent internet let the volunteers make regular video calls.

Natalia’s comrade Dr Serhii Zakharchenko, 38, also has three kids whom he rarely sees because of his life-saving work.

He said: “I miss them. It is really, really hard.”

His eldest son Andriy is ten, daughter Varvara is eight and youngest Kostia, four.

He added: “Kostia is too young to understand, but the older ones do.

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“They know there is a war on. It is terrifying for them, but I can’t hide it. They see the explosions.

“There are missiles and drones landing near our home.

“But the best thing I can give them is a free country to grow up in.

“We are saving soldiers’ lives. We are helping Ukraine win the war.

“That’s the best thing I can give them.”

The MOAS workers like Oksana work three months at the front with just ten days’ leave to see their little ones
The MOAS workers like Oksana work three months at the front with just ten days’ leave to see their little onesCredit: Dan Charity

Ukraine

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