Stunned, bleeding, disorientated and amazed at surviving a double landmine blast inside their armoured ambulance, the Ukrainian medical team had lost their radio and their bearings.
They knew a Russian ambush team was close and they had to get out of Niu York, near Donetsk, fast.
Their leader, Rebekah Maciorowski, a volunteer from Colorado, didn’t see the Ukrainian drones overhead that were flashing their beacons to lead her to safety. It was broad daylight.
Russian drones could also see them, they knew as they scuttled into an abandoned building. They were in the worst of military predicaments – a total loss of control.
“Getting blown up was not so traumatic compared to the situation that we were in with no comms. No comms, you know, in a grey zone, no communications, no navigational reference,” says Rebekah, 31, a permanent frontline medic in Ukraine since March 2022.
Yet even more traumatic was hearing her own president turn on Ukraine’s president and switch sides, to backing the Kremlin. She heard him do that while watching a drone feed of another of her teams under fire trying to rescue wounded soldiers on the front line near Toretsk, north of Donetsk.
“You know what’s crazy? I’m watching on the [live combat drone feed] as hit after hit goes to my [soldiers’] position. And we’re waiting to find out who’s dead or injured. And Donald Trump’s voice is in the background saying like, well ‘they could have had a deal and it would have been a very good deal’, and it just it was so ironic.
“You’re watching your friends and colleagues that you have taken care of potentially die in front of you while you’re listening to a leader of a democratic country say it doesn’t matter.”
This was the point when Ukraine almost lost control of its defence against Russia – when Trump resolved to suspend military aid, then cut intelligence feeds – blinding and weakening Ukrainian soldiers in combat.
Ukrainian soldiers and foreign volunteers fighting alongside them have been largely gagged by Kyiv. They have been told not to make the terrible relations with the Trump administration any worse after the White House changed from ally of Ukraine to adversary.
But for Rebekah and her team, which include Ukrainians, a German, a Georgian and a New Zealand nurse, as part of Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade, the American switch has been devastating.
Rebekah, a trauma nurse based in Denver, with experience in humanitarian work in Central America, volunteered when Ukraine called for help after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. She came on a five-week leave period and never went back.
Volunteering in teams on the front lines and running evacuations of civilians and soldiers, she built up a social media following which allowed her to raise an estimated $300,000 for supplies to her teams.
She thought what she was doing was all-American and in the best traditions of the defence of democracy and decency her country always stood for.
