There was no medicine, so this Ukrainian nurse sang lullabies to wounded soldiers

From all her years of caring for wounded soldiers, the Ukrainian nurse recounts one transcendent moment of comfort she provided early in this war that she says she’ll never forget – and that made all the difference.

Not long after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Oksana Sokhan found herself in an evacuation minibus, wedged between two stricken soldiers in the dark, as the vehicle tried to safely get away from the front line.

The wounded men were agitated and anxious, disoriented and determined to get up and move. Ms. Sokhan had no sedatives – but she had within her the key to calming them.

She began singing Ukrainian lullabies to the wounded fighters, and stroking them as a mother would.

Their anxiety eased. If she stopped the soothing singing for a moment, she saw their anxiety surge again.

“I was surprised myself that it worked – surely it worked on a subconscious level for both of them,” recalls the nurse, who wears an amused smile, purple medical scrubs, and a dog tag on a chain.

She tells her story during a lull in treating combat wounded at a makeshift surgical center – called a “stabilization point” – near Ukraine’s southern front line, south of Zaporizhzhia.

“I didn’t know what else to do; we didn’t have any medicine,” says the nurse. She carries herself with the confidence of someone playing a constant critical role – without fanfare, like everyone else in this medical unit – helping to save the lives of thousands wounded in Ukraine’s war.

Ms. Sokhan still laughs about that moment of serendipitous support with the lullabies in the minibus, and about how – after they had all arrived safely at the hospital – a nurse came out to report that one of the men was convinced his mother had been with him during the evacuation.

“In my real life, I am not singing,” Ms. Sokhan says, smiling wryly. “I don’t have a voice.”

“We all live for one day”

Ms. Sokhan may be just one senior nurse, but she is emblematic of the legions of Ukrainian military medics devoted to preserving the lives of the country’s outnumbered forces.

For years a member of the 128th Separate Transcarpathian Mountain Assault Brigade, she has seen a whirlwind of casualties at different points along the front line since Russia’s all-out invasion.

Ukraine’s liberation of Kherson in September 2022, for example, and the monthslong grinding fight for Bakhmut late last year pushed Ms. Sokhan and her colleagues to the limit. During both campaigns, the medical teams regularly saw 100 casualties come through their doors daily. From Bakhmut, the nurse describes an “endless flow,” with surges as high as 150 a day.

“Everyone here, we all live for one day. If we survive today, it’s good,” she says. “I’ve learned not to not build plans.”

Ms. Sokhan never expected to be a front-line nurse in Russia’s war, either. Originally from Ukraine’s eastern region of Luhansk – which traditionally has had some pro-Russian sentiment, and was fully, if unilaterally, annexed by Russia in September 2022 – she was a decade ago at the opposite end of the country, in the far west, taking care of people at a sprawling resort.

When Russian troops invaded Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, she recounts, her daughter and son-in-law, who were on the peninsula to “live close to the sea,” called her in alarm. They told her the Russians had issued an ultimatum: Take Russian passports and denounce Ukraine, or leave.

“‘There was nothing to decide; we’re coming back to Ukraine,’” Ms. Sokhan recalls her daughter telling her. They moved back to their hometown of Lysychansk, but within a month, Russian and pro-Russian proxies were there, too, seizing control.

The family had to walk more than 4 miles, with a 4-year-old and all the belongings they could carry, before fleeing west.

“I got very angry,” recalls Ms. Sokhan. “I quit that job and went to the military office to sign up for the army.”

After overcoming initial hesitation by the Ukrainian army about accepting a native of Luhansk, Ms. Sokhan entered the military, and has been on every combat rotation for nearly a decade.

The most difficult thing?

“Not to see your dear ones, not to see your family,” says Ms. Sokhan. She was shocked by how much her now 15-year-old granddaughter had grown, after seeing her for the first time in two years.

“When I was leaving, I had to bow to kiss her. Now she has to bow to kiss me,” Ms. Sokhan says with a laugh.

“Friends, not just colleagues”

The camaraderie wrought by difficult shared experiences keeps the unit together, the medics say.

“We don’t see if it is day or night; we are working all the time,” says surgeon Anton Yakovenko, noting that the Bakhmut fight produced a heavy flow of casualties every day, for months.

“We are really like friends, not just colleagues,” he says. “We use some humor; we eat together; we speak about our families. It helps to have these great people around me.”

“The main challenge is that we get tired of everything,” says unit leader Oleh Bihari. “We’re tired of being tired; there is no end in sight.”

Indeed, the trajectory of the conflict has weighed on these medics, as it has on soldiers up and down the 600-mile-long front. Optimism of swift Ukrainian advances that accompanied significant gains in late 2022 were erased by a failed counteroffensive in 2023.

That has been followed by a subsequent shift, today, to defense only – with American military support remaining tied up in Congress.

For her part, Ms. Sokhan focuses on doing what she can to contribute to the well-being of Ukraine’s wounded soldiers.

“We want to save everyone,” she says. “Of course, it’s very important to see the results of your work, because when they come here” the soldiers are traumatized, in pain, “and when they leave ... they are already waving sometimes.”

She has also been impressed by the singular devotion to continue the fight, which she herself exemplifies.

“What’s uplifting and inspiring are our guys, people who come here wounded, who are cold and hungry and dirty,” says Ms. Sokhan. “But all they say is, ‘Doc, quickly get me fixed up; I’ve got to get back to my guys.’

“How could this not inspire you?”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.