"It was eating away at me that my country was at war while I was here": the story of a Mariupol surgeon who returned from abroad to serve in the army
Mariupol-born Dmytro Hetmanov was used to medicine, with all its difficulties and losses: his entire family works in healthcare, and he himself had barely taken off his white coat since 2013.
But on 24 February 2022, his life was divided into "before" and "after". Suddenly, the civilian urological surgeon found himself having to try and save dozens of people who had been wounded in Russian attacks – many of them fatally.
One of the most challenging cases of Dmytro's life was a teenager who died on the operating table. It was March 2022. A father carried in his wounded son, a boy of 14 or 15.
At first the teenager's wound appeared minor – just a small hole in his chest. But before long, his blood pressure began to drop and his heartbeat slowed. The doctors tried to resuscitate him, but nothing worked.
Dmytro performed a thoracotomy, opening up the boy's chest to carry out direct cardiac massage. It was then that he saw that the heart and blood vessels had been torn apart. There was no way to save him.
The boy's father was waiting outside the theatre.
"I couldn't talk to him. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I turned around and moved on to the next patient," Dmytro recalls.
At the time, Dmytro was working at Mariupol City Hospital No. 1. People had been bringing wounded civilians in from the early days of the full-scale war. For three weeks, he saved lives in a city where fighting was raging.
When it became almost impossible to continue working, Dmytro left the besieged city with his parents and neighbours. He then spent two years working as a urological surgeon at a university hospital in Poland, but eventually he returned to Ukraine to join the military.
Today, Dmytro is operating on wounded people once again, this time as a military surgeon with the 4th Medical Battalion of the 3rd Army Corps. Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia tells his story.
"I don't remember even a single one of my patients' faces." Surviving Mariupol
Dmytro Hetmanov, who now goes by the alias Hetmani, was born into a family of doctors in Mariupol. Medicine has been his passion since childhood, he says.
In 2013, he graduated from Kharkiv National Medical University and began a urology internship in Donetsk. When the city was occupied by the Russians in 2014, he collected his documents and transferred to a hospital in Kharkiv. After completing his internship in 2015, he returned to his native Mariupol.
Shortly before the start of the full-scale invasion, Dmytro suspected that the war might reach his city. On 23 February 2022, he called his ex-wife and asked her to pack her things.
Dmytro went to his parents' home that night. At around 05:00 on 24 February, he heard the first explosions. His ex-wife left the city with their six-year-old daughter, and Dmytro went to work.
"Everyone was in utter despair, except for some of our junior medical staff. There were some pro-Russian people among them who were delighted that it was happening. They were like, 'The Russians will come now, Putin will hand out money,'" Dmytro recalls.
Some of the doctors left the city during the first few days of the full-scale war. Of the 11 or so urologists working at the hospital, only three initially remained. Later one of them stopped coming in: he lived in another part of Mariupol and could no longer get to work.
The remaining medical staff worked alternate shifts: 24 hours at the hospital, 24 hours off.
"We had a team there: about three or four surgeons stayed. There were two trauma surgeons and two anaesthetists, although in fact there was only one, because the other one took over the running of the hospital," Dmytro says.
The number of wounded patients increased dramatically when Russian forces entered the settlements near Mariupol, including Sartana and Talakivka. More and more casualties began arriving from those areas.
In the early days the emergency services were still able to take the wounded to hospital. Once they stopped operating, people had to find their own way to safety – driving in their own vehicles or walking, sometimes carrying wounded people in their arms.
"It was mostly shrapnel wounds. There weren't any drones back then, but there was a lot of tubed artillery, so it was shrapnel from the shells. And there were penetrating wounds – to the abdomen, chest and so on. We stabilised the patients, then operated on them and continued to care for them afterwards," Dmytro recalls.
Around 30-50 people would arrive at the hospital every day, and around a third of them would need surgery.
"A lot of desperate people whose homes had already been destroyed came to us," Hetmani recollects. "They were looking for shelter and protection in the hospital. The hospital reception was on the ground floor of our surgery building. People used to gather in the corridors.
At first the Russians tried not to hit the hospital. But by mid-March we'd started getting hit too. The hospital was near the Illich Steelworks, where marines from the 36th Brigade were holding the defence. They were under fire from everything, and so were we – tubed artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems, ballistic missiles, mortar fire. Eventually, small-arms fire started up nearby as well. There was close-quarters fighting not far from the hospital."
The doctors were working with no electricity or running water and insufficient medical supplies. By early March, petrol stations, pharmacies and shops had been almost completely emptied.
At home, Dmytro's family shared food with their neighbours. They ate whatever anyone had left – preserves, tinned food and supplies from their freezers. At the hospital, meanwhile, the medical staff prioritised feeding the wounded.
"We didn't eat much. The portions were very small. The wounded were given food first. We'd just grab a little something ourselves and carry on working," Dmytro recalls.
Water was also hard to come by. After his shifts, Dmytro and his family would go to a well near Petrovskyi Park, not far from the cemetery. They boiled the water from the cemetery area and drank it. They collected snow for washing dishes and other household needs. Fortunately, State Emergency Service workers were at least able to deliver non-potable water to the hospital.
Eventually the medical staff ran out of anaesthetics, sutures and dressing materials. Worst of all, however, the hospital had no blood for transfusions. As a result, the post-operative mortality rate was very high, Hetmani recalls.
"Of course the situation in Mariupol was terrible. I've forgotten a lot of it. The mind pushes the bad things away. For example, I can't remember a single face of any of the patients we helped in Mariupol. I don't remember them at all," he says.
There were some lighter moments, however. Dmytro recalls one risky expedition to find diesel.
"I'd come home from a shift and my parents were cooking outside. We'd had a bit to drink – I was stressed. Then some guys we knew came over and said, 'Everyone's looting the petrol stations. You can get some diesel there.'
And I thought, 'We've got a generator at the hospital. Let's grab some containers, go and get some diesel and take it to the hospital,'" Dmytro recalls.
Dmytro drove to a petrol station near the Illich Steelworks. To the sound of artillery fire booming all around him, he drew off the diesel and poured it into plastic containers. He took it to the hospital, then collected some empty containers that had been used for dialysis water and made several more trips.
"When the fuel there ran out, we went to another petrol station where the marines were handing out diesel. I said, 'Guys, let me through, it's for the hospital.' I hadn't even changed yet – I was still wearing my scrubs. And one of the marines says over the radio, 'There's some half-drunk doctor here demanding diesel,'" Dmytro smiles.
Dmytro managed to obtain around 300 litres of diesel – enough to keep the hospital running for four or five days. When he finally returned home, his mother was crying. She had thought he had been killed somewhere in the city.
"The Drama Theatre was burning before my eyes." The escape
On 15 March, Dmytro and his colleagues had an especially hard shift. Many wounded people were brought to the hospital, and the surgeons operated until late into the night. When the work was finally over, Dmytro went to sleep, only to be woken the next morning by an explosion nearby.
"A FAB [a high-explosive aerial bomb – ed.] had landed somewhere nearby. I woke up and went to the stairwell to have a smoke. You could see the village of Volonterivka from a nearby window, and there was already small-arms fire there. I thought, another day or two and the Russians will be here [in the hospital]. We have to do something," the doctor recalls.
That day, the medical staff gathered to discuss how they would continue working. Several older colleagues who could not leave because they were taking care of sick family members decided to stay at the hospital, while the rest of the team decided to try to escape the city.
Dmytro decided to leave as well. He says he realised that once Russian forces were established there, someone might snitch on him because of his pro-Ukraine views.
Back home, Dmytro told his parents they needed to pack immediately. The family also took some neighbours with them whose cars had been destroyed.
"There were seven people and a cat in my car. And my parents had another two or three people in theirs," he says.
To leave in the direction of Berdiansk and then on to Zaporizhzhia, they had to cross Mariupol. Dmytro lived in the Kalmiuskyi district, so their route took them through the city centre, where intense fighting was underway. There was no humanitarian corridor at the time – the family set off at their own risk.
On the way, Dmytro drove past the Drama Theatre. That day, 16 March, Russian forces had bombed the building, where hundreds of civilians had been sheltering.
"It was still burning before my eyes," he recalls.
Dmytro and his family headed west through the port towards the road to Manhush. They managed to avoid the fighting. A convoy of cars had already formed on the road, full of other people trying to escape Mariupol.
Then came the Russian checkpoints. At a checkpoint in Manhush, Russian soldiers nearly confiscated Dmytro's car. He was eventually allowed through after giving money to one of them.
At around 01:00, they reached Tokmak, where they met some of Dmytro's colleagues. Another Russian checkpoint lay ahead, but no one was being allowed through at night.
"There was this huge line of refugees. It was bitterly cold, around -10°C. And I had hardly any petrol left, so I couldn't turn on the heater. Nobody slept that night," Dmytro says.
At around 06:00, the barrier was raised. After being checked, the convoy continued on its way. Dmytro says they passed through around 10 checkpoints in Tokmak alone. Beyond Vasylivka, he saw signs of fighting and burnt-out military vehicles, both Ukrainian and Russian.
Near the line of contact, Russian troops stopped the convoy of civilian vehicles and used it as cover.
"There was a Russian armoured personnel carrier in front, people moving in formation on either side, and all this whistling and roaring overhead – mortar rounds, artillery fire. And they stopped us and used us as cover. They kept us there for about 40 minutes.
I'm sitting behind the wheel thinking, 'Well, that's it. We survived Mariupol, the Russian shells didn't get us, and now our own guys are going to finish us off,'" Dmytro admits.
But the Ukrainian troops did not fire when they saw the civilian vehicles. Eventually, the Russian soldiers allowed the convoy to continue. A bridge on the road to Zaporizhzhia had been destroyed, so the drivers had to take other roads around it. Finally, Dmytro and his family reached Ukrainian-controlled territory.
"I saw the Ukrainian flag and our police officers. I'd never been so happy to see the police in my life. We were home," he recalls.
The police met the evacuees and helped them reach a hub for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia which had been set up in a hypermarket. Dmytro and his family had left Mariupol with almost no food or water, so the first thing they did was look for something to eat.
"I got a can of Coca-Cola and a fresh, warm French baguette. It was the best thing I'd eaten in two weeks," the doctor recalls.
Shortly after Dmytro escaped, Russian forces razed the Mariupol hospital where he had worked to the ground.
"Friends were joining the Armed Forces while I was sitting here. It really ate away at me." Poland
Dmytro's ex-wife and daughter found refuge in Kraków, staying at the home of a Polish woman who was also a medical professional. She invited Dmytro to join them – as the father of a child with a disability, he was entitled to leave Ukraine.
"To be honest, I thought I'd go back straight away. I thought I'd have a month off, then return and join the Armed Forces. Because the guys I'd worked with joined up almost immediately. Most of them went into the Medical Forces. But my ex-wife said to me, 'Why would you go off to fight? You have a child, and you can work as a doctor in Poland. Give it a try.'
So I thought, all right, I'll give it a try. I started going around hospitals and looking [for jobs] online. I was told to get lost a few times. Then I found Professor Andrzej Paradysz in Katowice. He's an amazing person, a very empathetic doctor. I told him my story and he took me on straight away. He has a soft spot for Ukrainians because his family has roots in Lviv. He treated me extremely well," Dmytro recalls.
Later his ex-wife and daughter moved to the US, while Dmytro stayed in Katowice with his parents. At first he assisted doctors during operations. He later obtained his licence and began operating independently. Within six months, he had learnt Polish fairly well and become close with his colleagues. But he says he was plagued by guilt.
"It was eating away at me that my country was at war while I was here. Some of my friends had joined the Armed Forces, while I was sitting here enjoying life. It just gnawed away at me. I was constantly watching the same Dvizh footage [a YouTube project by the 3rd Assault Brigade – ed.] on social media or military videos.
Then my parents went to Kyiv. They'd been really homesick and had neither the energy nor the inclination to settle in Poland. I told them, 'If that's how you feel, then go.' Once everyone had left, I was on my own. I became terribly depressed. And eventually I couldn't take it any more," Dmytro recalls.
After two years in Poland, Dmytro handed in his resignation to the professor and left a few days later. He obtained a letter of recommendation for a military unit, took it to a military enlistment office, completed basic military training and signed a three-year contract as a soldier.
Dmytro decided to take a break from medicine and joined one of the regiments in Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces.
"I wanted a bit of a break from medicine. I was also interested in working with maps and spatial orientation. I've been interested in military equipment and geography since I was a child," he says.
He spent around six months working in Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv oblasts, and occasionally in Luhansk Oblast. But eventually he began to miss military medicine. His original crew was also starting to be disbanded, as the regiment was being expanded into a brigade.
"I'd done enough 'flying', put it that way. I realised I missed medicine. I was already starting to forget a lot of things, and my hands weren't getting any practice. It's like being a guitarist or a pianist – you've got to keep your hand in," he says.
In 2025 Dmytro saw an ad on social media for the medical battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade. He applied for a position.
"I didn't want to work in some hospital in a town or city. I like working closer to the battlefield. I wanted to be nearer the action," he says.
"What I probably like most is the camaraderie." Serving with the 3rd Army Corps
Dmytro is once again working as a surgeon with the 4th Separate Medical Battalion of the 3rd Army Corps, but his range of duties is now considerably broader than when he worked as a urologist. For one thing, he has taken part in brain surgery for the first time.
"I'd never operated on someone's head in my life. But Vahus, our neurosurgeon, said to me, 'Come along with me and get some practice.' I assisted him and sutured the dura mater. I have general surgical skills, but I'd never worked in that area before. With his help, though, it was interesting to try something new," Dmytro says.
Dmytro had also never performed an amputation in civilian practice, but he can now take part in such operations as well.
The medical team most often treats soldiers with limb injuries. Many have minor shrapnel wounds or gunshot fractures. Trauma surgeons primarily handle these cases, with Dmytro assisting them.
Dmytro himself most enjoys operating on penetrating abdominal wounds.
"I like operating on the abdomen. I used to work in endourology, so I'm not afraid to go in there now," he says.
Not all of his work in the battalion involves combat injuries. Soldiers also come to Dmytro with ordinary urological conditions. He performs ultrasound scans, gives medical advice and sometimes operates on them. On days when there are few wounded soldiers, he devotes his time to routine procedures.
"I've been with the battalion for almost a year now, and we've all learned to work really well together. We have a great team. We're all very close, we work well together and communicate well with each other. What I probably like most is the camaraderie, the sense that we're all brothers," he says.
Hetmani says he hasn't regretted his decision to serve for a single day, although he does miss his daughter.
"I can see she's upset that I'm not there with her," he says. "Maybe she sees other children's dads picking them up from school, and she doesn't have that. She doesn't talk about it, but I can tell it bothers her.
But this is my duty. I volunteered, so ultimately it was my decision. I need to finish what needs to be done here, and then I can think about what comes next."
Olena Barsukova, Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia (Life)
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska
Edited by Teresa Pearce