for neurosurgeon Mykola Polishchuck His wife told him that these days he takes medicine to relax “so as not to hear the sound of the bombings” in Kiev. The head of the Ukrainian Red Cross says this during a break from a trip to Madrid, where he went for treatment. the Spanish Red Cross Gold Medal, and in the middle of the week, when the capital of the country of drones appears in the sky four times a day.
He repeats “four times a day”, emphasizing with his four fingers, trying to understand with his eyes. Despite the danger, “We cannot leave Kiev -he says-; we must not leave there; We must remain as if many remained”. In 2021, he established an emergency neurosurgery system in Ukraine and served as the Minister of Health in the Presidency. Yushenko, and led a health reform in the country… after a two-year hiatus he was elected president of the Ukrainian Red Cross. “I thought it would take three months,” he says. touched her His country’s greatest existential crisis since the Holodomor, famine that killed more than two million Ukrainians, including six children of his paternal grandfather.
Mykola Polishchuk was born in 1944 in Lipyaten, a peasant village in the province of Vinnitsa. Stalinist Holodomor –“Ethnic cleansing massacre”Qualities- it had devastated the country eleven years ago, but Ukraine still had to suffer. holodfamine in the post-war period. “In 1946 and 1947 there were no men for the fields; there was nothing to plant; there was nothing to farm…” describes this 79-year-old doctor, the son of a Soviet warrior who returned from the front with a serious injury. In villages like his, starving survivors “hid their best among bales of fodder; This is how they survived.”
The head of the Ukrainian Red Cross was born during World War II and reached old age at the risk of one-third. Old age is not old age; much less obsolete: he is an energetic, active, talkative man. Her trick is “not stopping,” she says, placing her index finger on her skull. He has written 36 books, mostly scientific but also political. and now he puts his political and vital testimony already in another testimony which he calls ‘Mid two centuries’.
Polishchuk heads a solidarity network. already provided basic needs to 13.4 million peoplePrimary medical care for 517,653 patients, a “friendly” space for 117,065 children, and psychosocial support for 429,407 war victims. Its 8,000 volunteers distributed 6.5 million food kits and 2.3 million hygiene items. The first thing that a person whose house is destroyed by a missile is the blessing of food and soap.
– The Ukrainian Red Cross is making a great effort, doctor.
-Yes, and thanks to people’s help and many other help. In 2017, the state stopped funding the Red Cross, but with the help of conscientious companies, international federations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, we were able to preserve the structure of the Ukrainian Red Cross, which has proven its effectiveness in the war. Today, the Red Cross is the largest humanitarian organization after the UN. Thanks to Spanish support, we can work in this way as well. I would also like to point out that the President Zelensky very supportive of volunteers.
-Volunteers, convoys, the headquarters of the Red Cross… All these come under attack in battle?
-Look, on February 25, 2022, the first day of the war, they destroyed the Red Cross branch. area [provincia] from Obolon. There was a person who had a large office there, and he gave it to the Red Cross so that it could be established. We hid where the office was and distributed humanitarian aid packages, making it harder to attack them. There were humanitarian centers in Odessa, Kherson, Kharkiv and Zaporiya, and they were all attacked. Today, humanitarian aid is a war goal for Russia.
But this is a war crime.
-Gives. Volunteers are dead.
-How many?
– Niet. We try not to talk about it. They are from Kherson, Odessa, Kharkiv and Bucha region but not to mention that is the procedure in our organization.
Polishchuk’s face darkened, his smile disappearing, confirming how good he had been on this journey. This neurosurgeon, who was a professor of mathematics in his region before studying medicine, had not returned to Spain for fifteen years. He still vividly remembers his trips to Barcelona, u200bu200bMontserrat, Valencia and Navarra. He also does not forget the wedding feast that the kings of Felipe and Letizia attended with his wife.
“We really liked the way you presented the food. It was delicious,” he says, and recalls “an excellent cancer clinic I visited in Pamplona.” vishivanka Blue and white. She wears a traditional Ukrainian blouse with embroidery on her chest, “because it’s like a flag to us,” she explains.
-There is one important informative unknown that no one has managed to solve. How many deaths has this war already killed?
-I can’t tell him. Perhaps the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is responsible for acting on the territory of both sides of the conflict. We operate in the unoccupied territory and the local federations of the Red Cross in Spain, Portugal, Italy are helping us. It is a support network covering 193 countries.
-Have you ever talked to the head of the Russian Red Cross?
I will never talk to him. No contact, we don’t want to. The International Committee will have to talk to the enemies. They, those in Russia, are helping the Russian army; They steal our humanitarian aid in Donetsk and Luhansk and give it to Russia as humanitarian aid. That’s why we will never contact them.
-What is the most urgent need of the Red Cross in Ukraine?
-We need help, any help is welcome. The most urgent, and also for the reconstruction of Ukraine, for medico-social programs, for psychosocial rehabilitation programs…
-When the war is over, Ukraine will definitely be a country full of injured people, not only physically, but also mentally.
-It is already today. Today, already, we need this help; not later.
The young volunteers of the organization he headed in the first days of the war distributed one and a half million aid packages from different parts of the world. Polishchuk remembers the exhausted youth who slept on the floor of the Red Cross headquarters in Kiev on endless dark nights.
The lack of light bothered this man in his childhood, and now, this winter, when Russia attacked power plants, it has surrounded him again. When Polischuk was a child, it was a long time ago, in 1974, residents of Ukrainian towns finally received permission to leave. “Because I couldn’t travel, I read all the books in the library. I finished school in 1961, entered college in 1963, and my town had no electricity until 1965”.
This veteran has spent 21 years reading and working by candlelight, as his six grandchildren, ages 9 to 12, now sometimes do in a basement.
-The head of the Ukrainian Red Cross is also grandfather Mykola. What do you think your grandchildren should never forget about this war?
Not what they should do, but what they can’t. I think my grandchildren will not forget many things. When you set out to go to school as a kid, when a bomb exploded in the sky above your head and you had to run to hide in a bunker… it will never be forgotten.