“We’ve Reanimated Pavel ‘Volat’ Under Shelling And Orlan’

• 17.02.2023, 13:22

The paramedic of the Kalinouski Regiment was in Bakhmut and was wounded there.

Anastasiya ‘Sever’ Mahomet is a Belarusian young woman and paramedic in the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment. She told White Coats Telegram channel about how she spent a year in the war, her wound, her dog and the future. Her story is full of strength and courage.

“Sever [the North] is a word that sounds good and clear on the radio,” says Nastia about her call sign.

In the beginning, the young woman was working in a first-aid station in Kyiv. She was giving first aid to the fighters who trained before being sent to the front. Then Nastia went to the military base in Mykolaiv and there she took up the organization of the evacuation service for the combat missions. Since then, the paramedic has always been on the battlefield. Now Nastia is the evacuation commander of the Volat Battalion of the Kalinouski Regiment.

The standard team consists of a medic, an assistant and a driver. A team has medical vehicles of varying degrees of equipment. Brigades are on duty near the place of fighting. Duty can take place in the basement, a trench in the forest or a village house. The task of Nastya and her colleagues is to evacuate the wounded. After that, the wounded are taken to the nearest working hospital or first-aid station. Hospitals are often ruined, they are rescuing soldiers on a small patch of land.

“I am tired and feel exhausted after a year of the war, especially in terms of responsibility. It is very difficult to be the person who is in charge of medicine for the entire regiment. Sometimes it seems to me that this is an unbearable burden of responsibility. My main job is organizing evacuation operations. But I am also responsible as the regiment's chief medical officer.”

“These “if only” I will spin until the end of my days”

Speaking about the dead, the young woman says that as soon as she got involved in the evacuation operation, she realized that sooner or later there would be death cases.

“Because war is such a thing. Sometimes you just can't do anything with it. However, I could not be prepared for Pavel ‘Volat’ to be the first ‘200th’ (dead soldier - Ed.). This is the worst thing that could happen,” Nastia says.

The fighters and the paramedics called Pavel 'Volat' an 'immortal' in their circles. Because the man had been wounded many times, including severe ones, but he had still survived.

“He was a very strong man. He often joked about whether he was lucky or not. Pasha always asked me what I needed for work and how he could help. We had a short conversation just before his death. Then he told me that he would heal everyone himself. He was the only one who knew the radio connection point. But he didn't tell any of the guys about it. When he was wounded, the guys could not contact me in time, because the radio did not reach me.”

Then, Pavel had injuries incompatible with life, that's what the surgeons later told Nastia.

“The brigade and I did everything to save Pasha. We took him out under shelling, and we were pursued by the enemy Orlan. We had revived him then. Pasha has a very strong heart, despite the huge blood loss. His heart was beating when we passed him to surgeons. As a doctor, I understood that we would not save him. When I realized this, I was doused with heat inside, I jumped on Pasha and began pressing his chest doing cardiac massage. We didn’t have an appropriate evacuation car then. I was holding the person who replaced me and pumped his heart with one hand, with the other hand I was holding Pasha’s leg, and I had a heart rate monitor between my legs so that I could see the indicators. Literally ten minutes after we passed him to the surgeons, the doctors came out and said that Pasha had died.”

The doctor convinced Anastasia that even if the fighter had been taken by helicopter, he still would not have survived. Too many vitals were damaged.

“But I will still think until the end of my days if we could save him. If we had another car, if we had taken him out faster ... These “if only” I will spin until the end of my days. Pasha is the only person who died during the evacuation. I saw him leaving. His life was slipping between my fingers and I was trying to grab it. And it is like that, it is simply impossible to keep it.”

“The rest of our '200th' soldiers died either on the spot or we were not just able to take them out. Like with Ivan 'Brest'.”

He was wounded and most likely finished off by the enemy. We couldn't get him, we can't even assess the severity of the injury. Because there is too little information.

Nastia calls Ivan a special person, although he seemed frivolous to her at first glance.

“He fooled around, but at critical moments he was serious, resolute, and just an excellent commander. He was our leader. I talked to Vania many times, he really believed in a free Belarus, he was dreaming that everything would change. Once he said that if we do not die in the war for Ukraine, we will die in the war for Belarus. I miss Vanya very much, every day I remember him with warmth. It was hard to realize his death, I did not believe that he was dead until the last. After all, we did not bury his body. For a while, I was cherishing the hope that suddenly Vania was still alive.”

"I get scared sometimes"

Nastia was also in Bakhmut, the hottest spot in Ukraine, but she got a shell shock there.

“I was in Bakhmut for several weeks in November and several days on New Year's Day. I was wounded there, so I had to change. Yes, Bakhmut can be called hell on earth, however, I could call Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk also like this. War is basically hell on earth. Cities turn into ruins if the front line gets stuck in them for a long time.”

The medic says that there are combat paramedics among the Belarusian fighters, they are acting both as fighters and medics at the same time.

“They appoint a battle group commander who takes out the wounded and passes them to the medics. I am evacuating wounded and never taking them from the battlefield. Yes, I'm ready if necessary, but I haven't had to do it yet. Our job is to take them to hospitals.”

While the wounded are being transported, you often have to talk to them. Often their reaction is fear, so you have to talk and talk with a person.

“Sometimes I get scared too. When Dzianis "Vaukalak" Urbanovich’s heart stopped, I was very scared. It stopped suddenly, and it was dangerous to pump the heart, his ribs were broken. I didn't know what to do. But then I changed the position of his body and his heart started up again. Although I had already said on the radio that he was ‘200th’ by this moment.

“My dream is to train it as a search dog”

For some time, Nastia was feeding a dog and its puppies. The girl fell in love with one of them and decided to take it. She named it Sery [Grey - Ed.].

“The doggie was turning upside down, tripping over its own paws, and I was watching it and saying to myself: "It's mine." I have always dreamed of having a dog. This is a huge responsibility, I'm paying a lot of attention to it. It seems that I will soon become a dog specialist. But I would like to give it even more of my time. My dream is to train it as a search dog. I was madly sick of the situations when we could not find the guys.”