“On the helicopter to Azovstal, I was afraid of just one thing: throwing up on the guys next to me.” Nurse Nadiya Yarysh talks about the siege of Mariupol, her captivity, her service after ca
Source: Novynarnia
Author: Anastasia Fedchenko
Nadiya Yarysh’s story is a ready-made script for a war movie.
A rural nurse from the Kharkiv region who signed a contract in 2017 and became a nurse at a mobile hospital in Mariupol. As a senior nurse, she was also caught up in the full-scale invasion in that city by the sea.
On the third day of the “big” war, she evacuated a wounded border guard to Dnipro, having unexpectedly “broken out” of the already-besieged city. She “traveled” around Ukraine for another month, accompanying wounded soldiers from the frontline regional center to hospitals in Vinnytsia or Lviv. And… she dreamed of returning to her people, to the hell of Mariupol.
Then came the night, a helicopter flying extremely low so as not to be seen, and a landing in Mariupol. An endless stream of wounded poured into the bunker hospital at “Azovstal”. Nonstop shelling from every possible weapon. Capture. Olenivka…
Nadiya Yarysh spoke to “Novynarna” about “her” Mariupol, the Russian terrorist attack at the Olenivka penal colony, her son who is also in the military, the hardships of military nurses’ work, the “smell of grief,” her dog Chekunya, her release from captivity, and whether she would go back to “Azovstal”—Nadiya Yarysh told “Novynarnia.”
A Flight to Blockaded Mariupol
March 31, 2022, 3:00 a.m. Four helicopters carrying people, ammunition, medicine, and provisions are flying from Dnipro, flying lower and lower, almost scraping the trees—so that no one would notice them.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense is conducting a special operation: there’s no other way to deliver reinforcements to Mariupol, which is surrounded by Russian forces, except by air. The flight is risky. Everyone is a volunteer; everyone understands that they could die if the Russians shoot down the helicopter.
A slender woman crouches by the hatch, pressing her forehead against the cold glass and peering into the darkness around her. This is Nadiya Yarysh. She’s a nurse, and right now her biggest fear isn’t dying, but…
“I was afraid I’d throw up all over the place,” Nadiya says frankly. “I drank everything I could, injected myself with everything I could, and sat there without moving so I wouldn’t feel nauseous.”
“I don’t like flying. That’s why I wasn’t afraid that we’d be shot down or crash or anything like that.” I didn’t even think about that. My only thought was, ‘Please don’t let me throw up on the guys.’”
We landed at the port after dark, quickly unloaded the ammunition, and loaded the wounded. Heavy shelling began. The helicopters took off. One of them—the very one Nadiya was flying in—never returned to Dnipro…
The soldiers who had flown into the city were taken in by fighters from the “Azov” regiment—to a bunker set up as a medical station. They said there was no way to get to Azovstal. Yarish was upset, because her colleagues were at the steel plant.
“They started bringing in the first wounded soldiers, and we provided assistance. It was so cold that evening that it felt like my bones were freezing,” Nadiya recalls.
Later, we received an order to assemble. The car, with its headlights off, sped along the embankment toward some pier. A boat was waiting there. We loaded the ammunition and got in ourselves.
“The boat stalled. And I thought: ‘You’re 50 years old and still haven’t learned to swim, you fool!’” the woman smiles. “Then the driver did something to the engine. Anyway, it stalled three times. With great difficulty, they took us to shore at ‘Azovstal’; we got out, unloaded the ammunition. And, just like in the fairy tale about The Twelve Months, we sat in a circle and waited for them to come pick us up. I was counting the rockets flying toward Azovstal. After the 15th one, I stopped…”
We waited for about three hours. The soldiers were taken away. The medical staff remained: Nadiya, two surgeons, and two anesthesiologists (among them—Oleksandr Demchenko, the hero of another “Novynarnia” article). The woman asked the soldiers what she should do, and they replied, “We don’t know. We’re heading the other way.”
“We’re standing there, lost. Just like in that video: ‘Oleg, are you crying? No, I’m laughing!’”—Yarish quotes a phone conversation between a border guard and his mother that went viral a few years ago. – No radio, no communication… But then a car came for us, picked us up, and took us to “Zhelezaka.”
“Zhelezaka” is a bunker on the Azovstal grounds that served as a hospital. Nadiya walked in there around five in the morning and jokingly “wished” her colleagues a happy April Fools’ Day. But the exhausted medical staff were in no mood to laugh.
“My friend, a doctor, was there. He’s still in captivity… I asked, ‘Aren’t you glad I came?’ He said, ‘Why did you come?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘are you out of your mind? You’re here, and I’m supposed to be there? Seriously, why did I come?!”—the nurse recounts that brief exchange. After leaving Mariupol, Nadiya felt almost like a traitor, and her heart constantly yearned to return.
She recalls how the guys bombarded the new arrivals with questions: they were worried that everyone had forgotten about them, that they’d be stuck at “Azovstal” forever.
“I explained to them that this wasn’t true, that the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, and the President’s Office all knew about the GUR operation to break through with helicopters to Mariupol to help its defenders—so they’re definitely not forgotten!
After I said that, everyone perked up a bit. It gave them some hope,” the woman says.
“You hear the applause—oh, that means they’ve brought food!”
According to Nadiya, despite the Russians’ frenzied attacks on “Azovstal,” the medics were confident in their safety—after all, “Azov” was defending them. The regiment’s fighters were preparing, if not for a war on such a massive scale, then at least for an escalation, so they stockpiled medicine and provisions.
But even those supplies couldn’t last forever, so eventually they had to scavenge for medicine from the factory first-aid kits in the workshops.
“As long as we had a mess hall, the cooks prepared meals. At first, twice a day, they fed the wounded and us. Then—once a day. Getting food delivered was problematic because the trucks were being shelled with VOGs. A lot of the guys on the transport were killed.
And then a bomb hit our kitchen,” Yarysh recounts. “There was a young guy sleeping there—Lyokha. The guys ran up to me: “Come on, we need to give him a painkiller!” I started crawling through the rubble, felt Lyokha’s hand somewhere under the stove, and injected him with a painkiller.
Guys from a neighboring position came over and dug him out—he had a closed head injury and his thumb was crushed. Our surgeon, Andriy, who often worked around the clock, amputated that thumb. So Lyokha lost a thumb, but he’s alive.”
After we lost the kitchen, the guys from the position started bringing food to the hospital once a day. The “dishware” was a 200-gram plastic cup; the ration was half a glass of porridge and a piece of lard.
“When the guys came down to us in the basement with their thermal backpacks, all the wounded applauded them. Because they’d been walking—sometimes underground, sometimes through tunnels, and sometimes on the surface—under constant shelling and drone attacks. “When you hear applause—oh, that means they’ve brought food!” Nadiya smiles.
Coffee and almost endless work kept us from starving: bandaging wounds, giving injections, treating new casualties.
– I’d eat half a portion and give the other half to a friend—he’s such a burly guy. Some of the girls gave their portions to the guys, too.
– What was the mood like among the wounded?
“It varied: some were apathetic, others hysterical. My friend, the nurse Valentina, said she didn’t even want to talk to some of them because they brought her down with their constant ‘we’re all going to die here.’”
Then one day she came to me and complained that she didn’t know what to give to this wounded guy who just kept whining and whining. I advised her to give him a vitamin and tell him it was a really cool, rare painkiller—and not to tell anyone he’d been given it!
A couple of hours later, she came back looking pleased: the patient said it helped him!”—Nadiya smiles at the memory of the “Azovstal” placebo.
In the hospital, she was the one who took care of the most seriously injured patients, who required constant attention. In particular, those who had been wounded in the abdomen. The conditions for them in the bunker were terrible—there was nothing. Dressings were made from ordinary bandages, which couldn’t even be sterilized anywhere.
“And yet the wounds healed right before our eyes—so fast! Probably due to adrenaline or something…” the nurse still marvels (anesthesiologist Demchenko also told “Novynarnia” about this amazing fact).
Olenivka. “Damn it, we’re on fire!”
When the Mariupol defense garrison, on orders from command, evacuated from “Azovstal” into Russian captivity, the severely wounded were carried out of the hospital first. The next day, those with less severe injuries and 13 medical personnel left. The least severely injured patients and the remaining medical staff left on the third day. Nadiya was among this last group to leave on May 18.
“It was raining; it was cold, damp, and miserable. And my heart ached,” the woman recalls. “And it was so painful to see that this beautiful, flourishing city had simply been destroyed. They drove us in a bus; it was dark, and of course, there were no streetlights. But they still wouldn’t let us look out the windows.”
Along with the other captives, Nadiya was taken to Olenivka. There, for disobedience, she had to spend 41 days in solitary confinement. There were ten of them in a cell meant for just two. Among the other nine girls were Valeria Subotina and Kateryna Polishchuk, nicknamed “Ptashka.”
“The ‘sweatbox’ is a small room, about 6 square meters. Most of it is taken up by a toilet—half a wall and a hole in the floor that constantly stinks,” the woman describes. “Those were their ‘disciplinary measures’ for those who showed their character and patriotism.
They asked me if I would return to fight once I was released. I replied that I wouldn’t fight because I’m a nurse, and I’d go wherever my hands were needed. If it’s at the front, then I’ll go there. They realized they needed to punish me.”
The occupiers demanded that I speak Russian. Yarish replied that she didn’t understand that language. “What, are you stupid? Speak Russian!” the prison guards raged. But they didn’t expect an answer about my attitude toward Russia after such exchanges: “It’s clear—it’s negative.”
On the night of July 29, 2022, Russia committed one of its most cynical crimes in Olenivka—the occupiers blew up buildings housing prisoners of war. The deaths of 53 defenders of “Azovstal” have been confirmed. Among them was Yaroslav Baïs from Odesa—the subject of one of “Novynarnia’s” reports.
Nadiya recalls that by that time, she and her cellmates had already gone to sleep.
“We were used to these ‘raids’ because various Russian military vehicles and weapons were stationed along the perimeter of the colony, and they regularly fired at our positions from there,” the woman explains. “They used us as cover because our side wouldn’t fire back, knowing there were prisoners of war in the colony.”
That evening, we heard a “raid” nearby, then a second one. And mad screams, just like from hell: “Bitches, we’re burning!” And then—bursts of machine-gun and assault-rifle fire.
Apparently, our guys were running, and the Russians were mowing them down…
It was something horrific. We were ordered not to look out the windows, and they closed the “feeding slots” (small openings in the doors through which food is passed—N). They said that anyone who looked out would be shot…”
We found out what had happened the very next day, when girls from the neighboring cell were transferred to our cell.
“Among them was Nina Kolosinska, an anesthesiologist—a very smart woman. She went to change dressings and provided medical care. There were many young men there with burns. Thanks to Nina, we knew who was alive and who had died.
I was filled with hatred. I usually try not to get close to people so it won’t hurt later. But, of course, among the dead were people I knew, many medics from the 36th Brigade (the 36th Separate Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Navy named after Rear Admiral Mykhailo Bilinsky—"N").
Chekunya was released from captivity
on
October 14, Nadiya notes ironically; she received a “gift” for Ukraine’s Defenders’ Day—she was transferred to Taganrog, Russia. There, she was taken for interrogations and forced to fill out some kind of questionnaire. But Yarysh refused—saying she couldn’t see anything without her glasses, which the Russians had taken away.
“They also forced me to learn the Russian national anthem. But I told them I can only memorize things visually; by ear, I can’t do it at all,” the woman says with a smile.
Such defiance would ultimately have cost her dearly, but Nadiya was lucky—she spent only three days in Taganrog. As it turned out later, they were already preparing her for an exchange, so they didn’t beat her—to avoid leaving any marks. Of course, at that time, the nurse had no idea about the exchange. When they were taken somewhere—like everyone else—she thought it was just another transfer to a different location.
They only began to suspect something was up when they were transferred from the plane to covered KamAZ trucks.
“The guard didn’t get in the truck with us; they didn’t force us to close our eyes, and they didn’t tape our eyes shut. One girl, from Crimea, saw a road sign and said, ‘Girls, we’re in Crimea.’ But I still couldn’t believe it was an exchange…”
Later, once they were already on the Ukrainian bus, the driver gave the former captives a phone, and they began calling home. Nadiya dialed her younger son: “Glory to Ukraine, son!” He asked, “Mom, where are you? I don’t believe it!”
And then came the moment that Yarysh describes as the most touching one after the exchange. They were taken to a hospital in Dnipro, and Nadiya was greeted by the female medics she had served with in Mariupol.
“They left on February 27, in two helicopters carrying the wounded. In Volnovakha, they came under fire from ‘Iglas’ (a Soviet MANPADS—‘N’). We later worked together on evacuation trains. But the fact that they met me at the hospital after my release—that’s unforgettable!”
Soon her family arrived: her husband, sister, and children. Along with the dog Chekunya, whom Nadiya’s younger son, Vladislav, had taken out of Mariupol the day before the invasion.
“Once, a friend and I were out walking and came across a puppy that someone had abandoned,” the nurse recounts. She says she hesitated about whether to take the puppy in, but in the end, she couldn’t leave her there. “She was so tiny, so strange—just like a ‘chekushka’ bottle. That’s how she became Chekunya.”
But she’s such a feisty one! She walks around, gets tripped up by weeds, falls down, but growls and barks at everyone. Not only could no one get near me, but no one could even look in my direction (she smiles). And then they brought her here, and she didn’t recognize me! I tried to pull her close to hug her, but she resisted, looking at me with such a puzzled expression… And then, as soon as she realized who I was, she rushed over and started licking me all over! She licked me all over.”
How Mariupol
Bloomed and Became “Ukrainian” Nadiya is originally from Berdianka in the Kharkiv region. She worked there as a nurse for nearly a quarter of a century, continuing the tradition of her mother, a pharmacist, and her older sister, a midwife. She loved her patients, especially the little ones. “When I gave them shots, they never cried,” she says proudly.
But at some point, it became impossible to work at her local clinic: one of the doctors was addicted to drugs, yet higher authorities ignored the staff’s complaints for over a year. At some point, Nadiya simply couldn’t take it anymore and decided to join… the military.
She was mobilized in May 2017. Next came a month of “training,” and in June she found herself in Mariupol for the first time in her life—a city that struck her at the time as dirty and gloomy. She served as a nurse in the hospital ward, then as the hospital’s head nurse.
At first, they were based in Malynivka, but for the winter they moved to City Hospital No. 5, which they had renovated themselves; until then, it had stood empty and was falling apart at the seams.
“We worked shifts every other day. In the morning, you hand over your shift, leave, lie down for a couple of hours—but it’s impossible to fall asleep because the renovations are constantly going on,” the woman recalls, describing an endless “Groundhog Day.” “You get up, get dressed, and go help everyone with the renovations. Then they’d drive you back to Malynivka for your shift. And the whole thing would start all over again.”
Once the renovations were finished, things got a little easier. When she had a little free time, she would walk around Mariupol. And she couldn’t help but notice that over the past few years, the city seemed to have blossomed: streetlights, beautiful parks, fountains.
“I hope that in the future, Mariupol will be even better!” Nadiya says emotionally.
Yarish recalls how, at the beginning of her service, medical personnel were forbidden from going out into the city in uniform. The attitude toward the military wasn’t exactly friendly.
“At first, there was no fence around our unit, and civilians would walk through the grounds. They’d shout after us, ‘May you all die!’ and spit at us, swearing. And at first, in stores or at the market, when I said ‘thank you,’ the shopkeepers would recoil as if I were someone from whom they were casting out demons,” she recalls. “But those were the ‘waiters’—the ones who, I think, have already died off.”
By 2021, we had already gotten the shopkeepers used to speaking Ukrainian with us. People in Mariupol began to respect the soldiers. And that change was very heartening.”
The smell of burning. The “Great” War
An experienced nurse thought nothing could shock her. But she will never forget the soldier who was blown up by a landmine—his foot was gone, his muscles torn, and his bone was visible.
“I couldn’t stand that smell of blood, dirt, iodine, and gunpowder. I felt terrible. It was the smell that did it. It was the smell of war and the smell of grief,” the woman recalls. “I almost threw up then.”
After that, Nadiya didn’t react as strongly. Civilians were also brought to the hospital. Like a tractor driver who stepped on a landmine. He, too, had a traumatic limb amputation, but after treatment, the man returned to a normal life.
Yarish didn’t follow the news very closely—she had a lot of work. But when, on February 21, 2022, Putin recognized the “independence” of the “L/DNR” within the administrative boundaries of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, she noted that “something was going to happen.”
The next day, she was on duty when an order to go on combat alert came from the “East” Operational-Tactical Group. Nadiya called all the military personnel at the hospital. Within half an hour, they arrived there and didn’t leave the premises again.
“My friend Marina and I were sleeping on the couch in the office. On the 24th, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of explosions and didn’t go back to sleep. We realized that the war had begun.
Then my eldest son called me; they were living in Saltivka, Kharkiv. Everything was already exploding there. I told him to take his wife and granddaughters (the youngest wasn’t even a year old) and go to his father’s village. My husband is a farmer,” explains Nadiya.
Around ten o’clock, a stream of wounded soldiers began arriving from Volnovakha, mostly with mine and explosive injuries. There was a medical team there, but they simply couldn’t keep up with providing care. And then, by a miracle, they themselves barely managed to escape the city.
Yarish, as she puts it, “worked as an administrative assistant”—handling paperwork: she received records of the wounded from her colleagues in Volnovakha and relayed the information via a secure communication channel to the Operational-Tactical Group. When a wounded soldier arrives, the paperwork must be filled out meticulously. The slightest mistake—and the injury will be deemed “invalid”—meaning no leave, compensation, or disability status will be granted for it.
“For example, Lera [Subotina]. I know she suffered a closed head injury when a FAB bomb hit their bunker at Azovstal. Our guys carried her to us. She didn’t get out of bed for about a week—she was in such bad shape. When she returned from captivity, I asked if they’d given her a medical certificate for the injury. And Lera said, “My injury isn’t documented anywhere.” Even though we had passed on all the information.
Now she needs to find two witnesses who saw that she was injured and who will provide signed statements. Only then will an official investigation be conducted, and perhaps she’ll be issued that medical certificate,” explains Nadiya.
On February 26, a female border guard was brought to them in critical condition: she had lost a limb and was bleeding profusely. She had to be evacuated accompanied by a medical professional. Yarysh volunteered.
“I thought to myself: I’ve lived a bit already, and my children are grown. And the rest of the nurses are young. So it’s better for them to stay here—after all, this could have been a one-way trip,” explains Nadiya. “I figured at the time that it would be safer to stay at the hospital than to drive across the whole city, where there was shelling and explosions.
There were two evacuations that day: one crew took the direct route to Zaporizhzhia, while we received orders to go through Azov. There were already burned-out cars lining the road…”
She brought the wounded woman to Dnipro, stocked the ambulance with bandages and other medical supplies, and waited for orders to return. But the commander forbade it—Mariupol was already surrounded.
“I felt like a deserter. All my people are there, and I’m basically hiding out in a safe place,” recalls Nadiya.
“Travel with the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Free”
The following month, she accompanied wounded soldiers on trains to Lviv or Vinnytsia, as there wasn’t enough room for them in Dnipro. At first, the medics paid for their own return trips, but later, when evacuation trains were introduced, they traveled for free.
“I called it the ‘Travel with the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Free’ campaign,” Nadiya smiles. “We had one doctor, one or two nurses, and 80, 100, or even 120 wounded patients for every three train cars.
I can provide any kind of medical care, help carry them out, give them a cigarette, or take them to the bathroom. The scariest thing for me was that there wouldn’t be enough food to feed them. Back in 2017, the guys nicknamed me ‘Mommy’ because I made sure everyone was fed and that everyone was doing well.”
Nadiya talks about a person she worked with in Dnipro and whom she truly admires. Anatoliy Ivashchenko, deputy commander of the medical unit at the Eastern Region Military Medical Center, who was “in the field” during the battles for the Donetsk Airport and provided aid to the wounded, established communication with all civilian hospitals in the Dnipropetrovsk region here in a matter of days. Every facility now accepts wounded Ukrainian soldiers without hesitation.
“He’s such a competent, knowledgeable specialist and organizer—very polite, well-mannered, and able to find common ground with any leader,” Nadiya praises him.
She explains why Ivashchenko’s logistical solution is so important: “Minor” casualties can easily be stabilized or operated on at any district hospital, but those who need a fight for their lives are taken to Mechnikov Hospital or a military hospital.”
“Thanks to his work, the lives of thousands of young men have been saved. He planned the layout of the evacuation train so that it would be convenient for both the wounded and the medical staff, ensuring nothing would get in the way of loading and unloading a soldier. At the start of the invasion, the wounded from the entire eastern front and the south were transported to Dnipro. If he hadn’t been able to organize this, the city would simply have been overwhelmed with the wounded. “They would simply have been lying in the streets,” Yarysh believes.
One day in late March, the commander of the Dnipro Medical Center gathered all the military medical personnel and asked who wanted to go to “Azovstal.” Only Nadiya raised her hand.
A Family Team: A Nurse and a Driver-Paramedic
Today, Nadiya Yarysh is a senior nurse in the surgical ward of the Zaporizhzhia Hospital. She doesn’t shy away from giving an injection or changing a diaper. She says “her girls” are completely exhausted because they’re essentially working every other day—there aren’t enough people.
“The saddest thing is that many people think the work of a nurse and a medical aide is easy and insignificant. But the surgeon performs the operation, turns around, and leaves, while the nursing care falls on the shoulders of the nurses and medical aides. A nurse’s salary is about 20,000, plus a bonus—since we’re in a combat zone—bringing it to 30,000. But our colleagues in the rear, who work every third day, receive the same pay!
I was on rotation in the east this summer.
In the mobile hospitals, the staff are simply falling apart—they’re exhausted after more than a year and a half of war, they never leave the operating rooms, and they don’t see their families.
“It shouldn’t be this way,” emphasizes the senior nurse.
Her younger son, Vlad, is serving alongside her. A sixth-year student at the Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic, he took a leave of absence from school. And just like that, a soon-to-be drilling rig engineer with the rank of private became an ambulance driver.
“He said, ‘Mom, a real war has started, and I’m not going to wait for it to end,’” Nadiya’s voice is full of warmth, pride, and anxiety. “Vlad likes that he’s helping to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. And since he enlisted voluntarily, they told him he wouldn’t be given an officer’s rank, even though he’d taken military training courses. When he’s discharged from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he’ll be awarded the rank of second lieutenant in the reserves.
But he doesn’t even want to be an officer. I asked him why. He said, “Because then I won’t be able to be a driver.” And he’s a really great driver!”
“Victory Isn’t Just About Reclaiming Territory”
When asked what she would consider a true victory, Nadiya confidently replies: not only the return of all occupied territories, but also proper medical care and rehabilitation for every wounded and traumatized soldier.
– When there are no more corrupt officials, no more profiteering off “humanitarian aid,” when they stop embezzling funds and giving bonuses to people who don’t deserve them,” she lists. “The guys in the mud on the front lines get a 30,000 bonus, while someone in the rear gets millions. For what? For lying in their own bathtub and sleeping in a warm bed?
”
And meanwhile, some old lady brings knitted socks or a pill bottle missing two pills “for the boys.”
– So your questions aren’t so much for civilians as for officials?
– Civilians do their part; they help out. The only issue is the cost of rent, because in Sloviansk or Kramatorsk, it’s practically worth its weight in gold. The guys are risking their lives behind your walls, and you’re fleecing them! (indignantly).
– Nadiya, if you were to go back to March 2022, would you head to “Azovstal”?
– Of course, I would have done the same. I just wouldn’t have taken the backpacks. I’d packed a lot of strong painkillers in them, and I’d brought candy and T-shirts for the girls. But when they were transporting us, my backpacks got lost somewhere. I asked the guys to bring them back, but they were on the other side of the river. By the time the soldiers got there, the backpacks had already burned up. And so had the four power banks inside them.
But for now, something else upsets her the most. Nadiya recalls how, in Taganrog, when she refused to fill out a form, a prison guard asked another female prisoner to help her fill it out. It was Anna from “Azov.” Nadiya was overjoyed: “She sat down next to me, and I quietly asked, ‘Anna, are you all here?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘Is everything okay?’ – ‘Yes. But at first, it was a nightmare.’” I felt reassured that the girls from “Azov” were here, that we were all together.
And I’m really hoping that all of our people who are still in captivity will return soon. Sometimes I feel like it’s so unfair—I’m here, and they’re there. I’m really looking forward to seeing my loved ones.”
Author: Anastasia Fedchenko
Nadiya Yarysh’s story is a ready-made script for a war movie.
A rural nurse from the Kharkiv region who signed a contract in 2017 and became a nurse at a mobile hospital in Mariupol. As a senior nurse, she was also caught up in the full-scale invasion in that city by the sea.
On the third day of the “big” war, she evacuated a wounded border guard to Dnipro, having unexpectedly “broken out” of the already-besieged city. She “traveled” around Ukraine for another month, accompanying wounded soldiers from the frontline regional center to hospitals in Vinnytsia or Lviv. And… she dreamed of returning to her people, to the hell of Mariupol.
Then came the night, a helicopter flying extremely low so as not to be seen, and a landing in Mariupol. An endless stream of wounded poured into the bunker hospital at “Azovstal”. Nonstop shelling from every possible weapon. Capture. Olenivka…
Nadiya Yarysh spoke to “Novynarna” about “her” Mariupol, the Russian terrorist attack at the Olenivka penal colony, her son who is also in the military, the hardships of military nurses’ work, the “smell of grief,” her dog Chekunya, her release from captivity, and whether she would go back to “Azovstal”—Nadiya Yarysh told “Novynarnia.”
A Flight to Blockaded Mariupol
March 31, 2022, 3:00 a.m. Four helicopters carrying people, ammunition, medicine, and provisions are flying from Dnipro, flying lower and lower, almost scraping the trees—so that no one would notice them.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense is conducting a special operation: there’s no other way to deliver reinforcements to Mariupol, which is surrounded by Russian forces, except by air. The flight is risky. Everyone is a volunteer; everyone understands that they could die if the Russians shoot down the helicopter.
A slender woman crouches by the hatch, pressing her forehead against the cold glass and peering into the darkness around her. This is Nadiya Yarysh. She’s a nurse, and right now her biggest fear isn’t dying, but…
“I was afraid I’d throw up all over the place,” Nadiya says frankly. “I drank everything I could, injected myself with everything I could, and sat there without moving so I wouldn’t feel nauseous.”
“I don’t like flying. That’s why I wasn’t afraid that we’d be shot down or crash or anything like that.” I didn’t even think about that. My only thought was, ‘Please don’t let me throw up on the guys.’”
We landed at the port after dark, quickly unloaded the ammunition, and loaded the wounded. Heavy shelling began. The helicopters took off. One of them—the very one Nadiya was flying in—never returned to Dnipro…
The soldiers who had flown into the city were taken in by fighters from the “Azov” regiment—to a bunker set up as a medical station. They said there was no way to get to Azovstal. Yarish was upset, because her colleagues were at the steel plant.
“They started bringing in the first wounded soldiers, and we provided assistance. It was so cold that evening that it felt like my bones were freezing,” Nadiya recalls.
Later, we received an order to assemble. The car, with its headlights off, sped along the embankment toward some pier. A boat was waiting there. We loaded the ammunition and got in ourselves.
“The boat stalled. And I thought: ‘You’re 50 years old and still haven’t learned to swim, you fool!’” the woman smiles. “Then the driver did something to the engine. Anyway, it stalled three times. With great difficulty, they took us to shore at ‘Azovstal’; we got out, unloaded the ammunition. And, just like in the fairy tale about The Twelve Months, we sat in a circle and waited for them to come pick us up. I was counting the rockets flying toward Azovstal. After the 15th one, I stopped…”
We waited for about three hours. The soldiers were taken away. The medical staff remained: Nadiya, two surgeons, and two anesthesiologists (among them—Oleksandr Demchenko, the hero of another “Novynarnia” article). The woman asked the soldiers what she should do, and they replied, “We don’t know. We’re heading the other way.”
“We’re standing there, lost. Just like in that video: ‘Oleg, are you crying? No, I’m laughing!’”—Yarish quotes a phone conversation between a border guard and his mother that went viral a few years ago. – No radio, no communication… But then a car came for us, picked us up, and took us to “Zhelezaka.”
“Zhelezaka” is a bunker on the Azovstal grounds that served as a hospital. Nadiya walked in there around five in the morning and jokingly “wished” her colleagues a happy April Fools’ Day. But the exhausted medical staff were in no mood to laugh.
“My friend, a doctor, was there. He’s still in captivity… I asked, ‘Aren’t you glad I came?’ He said, ‘Why did you come?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘are you out of your mind? You’re here, and I’m supposed to be there? Seriously, why did I come?!”—the nurse recounts that brief exchange. After leaving Mariupol, Nadiya felt almost like a traitor, and her heart constantly yearned to return.
She recalls how the guys bombarded the new arrivals with questions: they were worried that everyone had forgotten about them, that they’d be stuck at “Azovstal” forever.
“I explained to them that this wasn’t true, that the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, and the President’s Office all knew about the GUR operation to break through with helicopters to Mariupol to help its defenders—so they’re definitely not forgotten!
After I said that, everyone perked up a bit. It gave them some hope,” the woman says.
“You hear the applause—oh, that means they’ve brought food!”
According to Nadiya, despite the Russians’ frenzied attacks on “Azovstal,” the medics were confident in their safety—after all, “Azov” was defending them. The regiment’s fighters were preparing, if not for a war on such a massive scale, then at least for an escalation, so they stockpiled medicine and provisions.
But even those supplies couldn’t last forever, so eventually they had to scavenge for medicine from the factory first-aid kits in the workshops.
“As long as we had a mess hall, the cooks prepared meals. At first, twice a day, they fed the wounded and us. Then—once a day. Getting food delivered was problematic because the trucks were being shelled with VOGs. A lot of the guys on the transport were killed.
And then a bomb hit our kitchen,” Yarysh recounts. “There was a young guy sleeping there—Lyokha. The guys ran up to me: “Come on, we need to give him a painkiller!” I started crawling through the rubble, felt Lyokha’s hand somewhere under the stove, and injected him with a painkiller.
Guys from a neighboring position came over and dug him out—he had a closed head injury and his thumb was crushed. Our surgeon, Andriy, who often worked around the clock, amputated that thumb. So Lyokha lost a thumb, but he’s alive.”
After we lost the kitchen, the guys from the position started bringing food to the hospital once a day. The “dishware” was a 200-gram plastic cup; the ration was half a glass of porridge and a piece of lard.
“When the guys came down to us in the basement with their thermal backpacks, all the wounded applauded them. Because they’d been walking—sometimes underground, sometimes through tunnels, and sometimes on the surface—under constant shelling and drone attacks. “When you hear applause—oh, that means they’ve brought food!” Nadiya smiles.
Coffee and almost endless work kept us from starving: bandaging wounds, giving injections, treating new casualties.
– I’d eat half a portion and give the other half to a friend—he’s such a burly guy. Some of the girls gave their portions to the guys, too.
– What was the mood like among the wounded?
“It varied: some were apathetic, others hysterical. My friend, the nurse Valentina, said she didn’t even want to talk to some of them because they brought her down with their constant ‘we’re all going to die here.’”
Then one day she came to me and complained that she didn’t know what to give to this wounded guy who just kept whining and whining. I advised her to give him a vitamin and tell him it was a really cool, rare painkiller—and not to tell anyone he’d been given it!
A couple of hours later, she came back looking pleased: the patient said it helped him!”—Nadiya smiles at the memory of the “Azovstal” placebo.
In the hospital, she was the one who took care of the most seriously injured patients, who required constant attention. In particular, those who had been wounded in the abdomen. The conditions for them in the bunker were terrible—there was nothing. Dressings were made from ordinary bandages, which couldn’t even be sterilized anywhere.
“And yet the wounds healed right before our eyes—so fast! Probably due to adrenaline or something…” the nurse still marvels (anesthesiologist Demchenko also told “Novynarnia” about this amazing fact).
Olenivka. “Damn it, we’re on fire!”
When the Mariupol defense garrison, on orders from command, evacuated from “Azovstal” into Russian captivity, the severely wounded were carried out of the hospital first. The next day, those with less severe injuries and 13 medical personnel left. The least severely injured patients and the remaining medical staff left on the third day. Nadiya was among this last group to leave on May 18.
“It was raining; it was cold, damp, and miserable. And my heart ached,” the woman recalls. “And it was so painful to see that this beautiful, flourishing city had simply been destroyed. They drove us in a bus; it was dark, and of course, there were no streetlights. But they still wouldn’t let us look out the windows.”
Along with the other captives, Nadiya was taken to Olenivka. There, for disobedience, she had to spend 41 days in solitary confinement. There were ten of them in a cell meant for just two. Among the other nine girls were Valeria Subotina and Kateryna Polishchuk, nicknamed “Ptashka.”
“The ‘sweatbox’ is a small room, about 6 square meters. Most of it is taken up by a toilet—half a wall and a hole in the floor that constantly stinks,” the woman describes. “Those were their ‘disciplinary measures’ for those who showed their character and patriotism.
They asked me if I would return to fight once I was released. I replied that I wouldn’t fight because I’m a nurse, and I’d go wherever my hands were needed. If it’s at the front, then I’ll go there. They realized they needed to punish me.”
The occupiers demanded that I speak Russian. Yarish replied that she didn’t understand that language. “What, are you stupid? Speak Russian!” the prison guards raged. But they didn’t expect an answer about my attitude toward Russia after such exchanges: “It’s clear—it’s negative.”
On the night of July 29, 2022, Russia committed one of its most cynical crimes in Olenivka—the occupiers blew up buildings housing prisoners of war. The deaths of 53 defenders of “Azovstal” have been confirmed. Among them was Yaroslav Baïs from Odesa—the subject of one of “Novynarnia’s” reports.
Nadiya recalls that by that time, she and her cellmates had already gone to sleep.
“We were used to these ‘raids’ because various Russian military vehicles and weapons were stationed along the perimeter of the colony, and they regularly fired at our positions from there,” the woman explains. “They used us as cover because our side wouldn’t fire back, knowing there were prisoners of war in the colony.”
That evening, we heard a “raid” nearby, then a second one. And mad screams, just like from hell: “Bitches, we’re burning!” And then—bursts of machine-gun and assault-rifle fire.
Apparently, our guys were running, and the Russians were mowing them down…
It was something horrific. We were ordered not to look out the windows, and they closed the “feeding slots” (small openings in the doors through which food is passed—N). They said that anyone who looked out would be shot…”
We found out what had happened the very next day, when girls from the neighboring cell were transferred to our cell.
“Among them was Nina Kolosinska, an anesthesiologist—a very smart woman. She went to change dressings and provided medical care. There were many young men there with burns. Thanks to Nina, we knew who was alive and who had died.
I was filled with hatred. I usually try not to get close to people so it won’t hurt later. But, of course, among the dead were people I knew, many medics from the 36th Brigade (the 36th Separate Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Navy named after Rear Admiral Mykhailo Bilinsky—"N").
Chekunya was released from captivity
on
October 14, Nadiya notes ironically; she received a “gift” for Ukraine’s Defenders’ Day—she was transferred to Taganrog, Russia. There, she was taken for interrogations and forced to fill out some kind of questionnaire. But Yarysh refused—saying she couldn’t see anything without her glasses, which the Russians had taken away.
“They also forced me to learn the Russian national anthem. But I told them I can only memorize things visually; by ear, I can’t do it at all,” the woman says with a smile.
Such defiance would ultimately have cost her dearly, but Nadiya was lucky—she spent only three days in Taganrog. As it turned out later, they were already preparing her for an exchange, so they didn’t beat her—to avoid leaving any marks. Of course, at that time, the nurse had no idea about the exchange. When they were taken somewhere—like everyone else—she thought it was just another transfer to a different location.
They only began to suspect something was up when they were transferred from the plane to covered KamAZ trucks.
“The guard didn’t get in the truck with us; they didn’t force us to close our eyes, and they didn’t tape our eyes shut. One girl, from Crimea, saw a road sign and said, ‘Girls, we’re in Crimea.’ But I still couldn’t believe it was an exchange…”
Later, once they were already on the Ukrainian bus, the driver gave the former captives a phone, and they began calling home. Nadiya dialed her younger son: “Glory to Ukraine, son!” He asked, “Mom, where are you? I don’t believe it!”
And then came the moment that Yarysh describes as the most touching one after the exchange. They were taken to a hospital in Dnipro, and Nadiya was greeted by the female medics she had served with in Mariupol.
“They left on February 27, in two helicopters carrying the wounded. In Volnovakha, they came under fire from ‘Iglas’ (a Soviet MANPADS—‘N’). We later worked together on evacuation trains. But the fact that they met me at the hospital after my release—that’s unforgettable!”
Soon her family arrived: her husband, sister, and children. Along with the dog Chekunya, whom Nadiya’s younger son, Vladislav, had taken out of Mariupol the day before the invasion.
“Once, a friend and I were out walking and came across a puppy that someone had abandoned,” the nurse recounts. She says she hesitated about whether to take the puppy in, but in the end, she couldn’t leave her there. “She was so tiny, so strange—just like a ‘chekushka’ bottle. That’s how she became Chekunya.”
But she’s such a feisty one! She walks around, gets tripped up by weeds, falls down, but growls and barks at everyone. Not only could no one get near me, but no one could even look in my direction (she smiles). And then they brought her here, and she didn’t recognize me! I tried to pull her close to hug her, but she resisted, looking at me with such a puzzled expression… And then, as soon as she realized who I was, she rushed over and started licking me all over! She licked me all over.”
How Mariupol
Bloomed and Became “Ukrainian” Nadiya is originally from Berdianka in the Kharkiv region. She worked there as a nurse for nearly a quarter of a century, continuing the tradition of her mother, a pharmacist, and her older sister, a midwife. She loved her patients, especially the little ones. “When I gave them shots, they never cried,” she says proudly.
But at some point, it became impossible to work at her local clinic: one of the doctors was addicted to drugs, yet higher authorities ignored the staff’s complaints for over a year. At some point, Nadiya simply couldn’t take it anymore and decided to join… the military.
She was mobilized in May 2017. Next came a month of “training,” and in June she found herself in Mariupol for the first time in her life—a city that struck her at the time as dirty and gloomy. She served as a nurse in the hospital ward, then as the hospital’s head nurse.
At first, they were based in Malynivka, but for the winter they moved to City Hospital No. 5, which they had renovated themselves; until then, it had stood empty and was falling apart at the seams.
“We worked shifts every other day. In the morning, you hand over your shift, leave, lie down for a couple of hours—but it’s impossible to fall asleep because the renovations are constantly going on,” the woman recalls, describing an endless “Groundhog Day.” “You get up, get dressed, and go help everyone with the renovations. Then they’d drive you back to Malynivka for your shift. And the whole thing would start all over again.”
Once the renovations were finished, things got a little easier. When she had a little free time, she would walk around Mariupol. And she couldn’t help but notice that over the past few years, the city seemed to have blossomed: streetlights, beautiful parks, fountains.
“I hope that in the future, Mariupol will be even better!” Nadiya says emotionally.
Yarish recalls how, at the beginning of her service, medical personnel were forbidden from going out into the city in uniform. The attitude toward the military wasn’t exactly friendly.
“At first, there was no fence around our unit, and civilians would walk through the grounds. They’d shout after us, ‘May you all die!’ and spit at us, swearing. And at first, in stores or at the market, when I said ‘thank you,’ the shopkeepers would recoil as if I were someone from whom they were casting out demons,” she recalls. “But those were the ‘waiters’—the ones who, I think, have already died off.”
By 2021, we had already gotten the shopkeepers used to speaking Ukrainian with us. People in Mariupol began to respect the soldiers. And that change was very heartening.”
The smell of burning. The “Great” War
An experienced nurse thought nothing could shock her. But she will never forget the soldier who was blown up by a landmine—his foot was gone, his muscles torn, and his bone was visible.
“I couldn’t stand that smell of blood, dirt, iodine, and gunpowder. I felt terrible. It was the smell that did it. It was the smell of war and the smell of grief,” the woman recalls. “I almost threw up then.”
After that, Nadiya didn’t react as strongly. Civilians were also brought to the hospital. Like a tractor driver who stepped on a landmine. He, too, had a traumatic limb amputation, but after treatment, the man returned to a normal life.
Yarish didn’t follow the news very closely—she had a lot of work. But when, on February 21, 2022, Putin recognized the “independence” of the “L/DNR” within the administrative boundaries of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, she noted that “something was going to happen.”
The next day, she was on duty when an order to go on combat alert came from the “East” Operational-Tactical Group. Nadiya called all the military personnel at the hospital. Within half an hour, they arrived there and didn’t leave the premises again.
“My friend Marina and I were sleeping on the couch in the office. On the 24th, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of explosions and didn’t go back to sleep. We realized that the war had begun.
Then my eldest son called me; they were living in Saltivka, Kharkiv. Everything was already exploding there. I told him to take his wife and granddaughters (the youngest wasn’t even a year old) and go to his father’s village. My husband is a farmer,” explains Nadiya.
Around ten o’clock, a stream of wounded soldiers began arriving from Volnovakha, mostly with mine and explosive injuries. There was a medical team there, but they simply couldn’t keep up with providing care. And then, by a miracle, they themselves barely managed to escape the city.
Yarish, as she puts it, “worked as an administrative assistant”—handling paperwork: she received records of the wounded from her colleagues in Volnovakha and relayed the information via a secure communication channel to the Operational-Tactical Group. When a wounded soldier arrives, the paperwork must be filled out meticulously. The slightest mistake—and the injury will be deemed “invalid”—meaning no leave, compensation, or disability status will be granted for it.
“For example, Lera [Subotina]. I know she suffered a closed head injury when a FAB bomb hit their bunker at Azovstal. Our guys carried her to us. She didn’t get out of bed for about a week—she was in such bad shape. When she returned from captivity, I asked if they’d given her a medical certificate for the injury. And Lera said, “My injury isn’t documented anywhere.” Even though we had passed on all the information.
Now she needs to find two witnesses who saw that she was injured and who will provide signed statements. Only then will an official investigation be conducted, and perhaps she’ll be issued that medical certificate,” explains Nadiya.
On February 26, a female border guard was brought to them in critical condition: she had lost a limb and was bleeding profusely. She had to be evacuated accompanied by a medical professional. Yarysh volunteered.
“I thought to myself: I’ve lived a bit already, and my children are grown. And the rest of the nurses are young. So it’s better for them to stay here—after all, this could have been a one-way trip,” explains Nadiya. “I figured at the time that it would be safer to stay at the hospital than to drive across the whole city, where there was shelling and explosions.
There were two evacuations that day: one crew took the direct route to Zaporizhzhia, while we received orders to go through Azov. There were already burned-out cars lining the road…”
She brought the wounded woman to Dnipro, stocked the ambulance with bandages and other medical supplies, and waited for orders to return. But the commander forbade it—Mariupol was already surrounded.
“I felt like a deserter. All my people are there, and I’m basically hiding out in a safe place,” recalls Nadiya.
“Travel with the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Free”
The following month, she accompanied wounded soldiers on trains to Lviv or Vinnytsia, as there wasn’t enough room for them in Dnipro. At first, the medics paid for their own return trips, but later, when evacuation trains were introduced, they traveled for free.
“I called it the ‘Travel with the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Free’ campaign,” Nadiya smiles. “We had one doctor, one or two nurses, and 80, 100, or even 120 wounded patients for every three train cars.
I can provide any kind of medical care, help carry them out, give them a cigarette, or take them to the bathroom. The scariest thing for me was that there wouldn’t be enough food to feed them. Back in 2017, the guys nicknamed me ‘Mommy’ because I made sure everyone was fed and that everyone was doing well.”
Nadiya talks about a person she worked with in Dnipro and whom she truly admires. Anatoliy Ivashchenko, deputy commander of the medical unit at the Eastern Region Military Medical Center, who was “in the field” during the battles for the Donetsk Airport and provided aid to the wounded, established communication with all civilian hospitals in the Dnipropetrovsk region here in a matter of days. Every facility now accepts wounded Ukrainian soldiers without hesitation.
“He’s such a competent, knowledgeable specialist and organizer—very polite, well-mannered, and able to find common ground with any leader,” Nadiya praises him.
She explains why Ivashchenko’s logistical solution is so important: “Minor” casualties can easily be stabilized or operated on at any district hospital, but those who need a fight for their lives are taken to Mechnikov Hospital or a military hospital.”
“Thanks to his work, the lives of thousands of young men have been saved. He planned the layout of the evacuation train so that it would be convenient for both the wounded and the medical staff, ensuring nothing would get in the way of loading and unloading a soldier. At the start of the invasion, the wounded from the entire eastern front and the south were transported to Dnipro. If he hadn’t been able to organize this, the city would simply have been overwhelmed with the wounded. “They would simply have been lying in the streets,” Yarysh believes.
One day in late March, the commander of the Dnipro Medical Center gathered all the military medical personnel and asked who wanted to go to “Azovstal.” Only Nadiya raised her hand.
A Family Team: A Nurse and a Driver-Paramedic
Today, Nadiya Yarysh is a senior nurse in the surgical ward of the Zaporizhzhia Hospital. She doesn’t shy away from giving an injection or changing a diaper. She says “her girls” are completely exhausted because they’re essentially working every other day—there aren’t enough people.
“The saddest thing is that many people think the work of a nurse and a medical aide is easy and insignificant. But the surgeon performs the operation, turns around, and leaves, while the nursing care falls on the shoulders of the nurses and medical aides. A nurse’s salary is about 20,000, plus a bonus—since we’re in a combat zone—bringing it to 30,000. But our colleagues in the rear, who work every third day, receive the same pay!
I was on rotation in the east this summer.
In the mobile hospitals, the staff are simply falling apart—they’re exhausted after more than a year and a half of war, they never leave the operating rooms, and they don’t see their families.
“It shouldn’t be this way,” emphasizes the senior nurse.
Her younger son, Vlad, is serving alongside her. A sixth-year student at the Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic, he took a leave of absence from school. And just like that, a soon-to-be drilling rig engineer with the rank of private became an ambulance driver.
“He said, ‘Mom, a real war has started, and I’m not going to wait for it to end,’” Nadiya’s voice is full of warmth, pride, and anxiety. “Vlad likes that he’s helping to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. And since he enlisted voluntarily, they told him he wouldn’t be given an officer’s rank, even though he’d taken military training courses. When he’s discharged from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he’ll be awarded the rank of second lieutenant in the reserves.
But he doesn’t even want to be an officer. I asked him why. He said, “Because then I won’t be able to be a driver.” And he’s a really great driver!”
“Victory Isn’t Just About Reclaiming Territory”
When asked what she would consider a true victory, Nadiya confidently replies: not only the return of all occupied territories, but also proper medical care and rehabilitation for every wounded and traumatized soldier.
– When there are no more corrupt officials, no more profiteering off “humanitarian aid,” when they stop embezzling funds and giving bonuses to people who don’t deserve them,” she lists. “The guys in the mud on the front lines get a 30,000 bonus, while someone in the rear gets millions. For what? For lying in their own bathtub and sleeping in a warm bed?
”
And meanwhile, some old lady brings knitted socks or a pill bottle missing two pills “for the boys.”
– So your questions aren’t so much for civilians as for officials?
– Civilians do their part; they help out. The only issue is the cost of rent, because in Sloviansk or Kramatorsk, it’s practically worth its weight in gold. The guys are risking their lives behind your walls, and you’re fleecing them! (indignantly).
– Nadiya, if you were to go back to March 2022, would you head to “Azovstal”?
– Of course, I would have done the same. I just wouldn’t have taken the backpacks. I’d packed a lot of strong painkillers in them, and I’d brought candy and T-shirts for the girls. But when they were transporting us, my backpacks got lost somewhere. I asked the guys to bring them back, but they were on the other side of the river. By the time the soldiers got there, the backpacks had already burned up. And so had the four power banks inside them.
But for now, something else upsets her the most. Nadiya recalls how, in Taganrog, when she refused to fill out a form, a prison guard asked another female prisoner to help her fill it out. It was Anna from “Azov.” Nadiya was overjoyed: “She sat down next to me, and I quietly asked, ‘Anna, are you all here?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘Is everything okay?’ – ‘Yes. But at first, it was a nightmare.’” I felt reassured that the girls from “Azov” were here, that we were all together.
And I’m really hoping that all of our people who are still in captivity will return soon. Sometimes I feel like it’s so unfair—I’m here, and they’re there. I’m really looking forward to seeing my loved ones.”
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.