Interview with Roman Tarasiuk a White Beret member

ine.org.pl 9 months ago

The full-scale war in Ukraine has been taking place on a number of levels for over 2 years, but there are aspects of this conflict, which, despite its importance, stay unknown.

My interviewer – Roman Tarasiuk is an equally crucial surgeon and field medicine instructor. As a associate of the White Berets, a medical non-governmental organization, he besides deals with innovation in this area. Despite all day of operations and treatments on wounded soldiers and respective anti-aircraft alarms, he managed to give an interview on his organization, field medicine and the situation in Ukraine.

I'd like to ask you about the White Beret genealogy. What was the starting point and prompted you to set up specified an organization?

It all started with Euromaidan, where many people died tragically. My father and his another founders were there and saw the helplessness and ignorance of the people about first aid. How to give it, what to do erstwhile bleeding heavily, or akin cases. It was the beginning of the White Bereta organization. Initially, it only operated in Tarnopol, but it spread very rapidly across the country. We operate in many locations – specified as Plains, Lviv or Kiev. We conduct most of the trainings in Lviv and Equatorial, but sometimes, erstwhile necessary, we sometimes run courses on the front.

Speaking of courses and training, you mean field medicine?

Not just field medicine. Our organization provides first-aid training for the civilian population. After Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2014, we took care of training soldiers in the TCCC standard (Tactical Combat Casualty Care, a set of medical guidelines and procedures utilized on the battlefield – ed.). Then we developed a civilian training department in BLS (Basic Life Support – Basic Resuscitation Treatments – ed.) and ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support – Advanced Resuscitation Treatments – ed.). At this time, any of our instructors, including my parents, trained in Estonia, at the medical military academy there. Thanks to volunteers and the support of good people, they were part of the squad that studied there and passed the teacher certification. Among another things, in Ukraine, processes related to innovation in medicine began. In addition to my parents, many people participated in these courses in Estonia, and erstwhile the TCCC protocols were introduced in Ukraine, many people began to take an interest in this subject and to look for courses, for example, in Poland and the United States. Since these events, our organization has trained thousands of soldiers. Soldiers who had no cognition of the field of combat medicine, due to the fact that so far the department of this cognition has inactive remembered the times of the russian Union, together with its archaic equipment and consciousness. Then we started to show what a modern tourniquet was, for example, due to the fact that so far this was not working in our reality.

I'm curious about the future of your organization. What was your participation in Operation Anti-Terrorist and Operation Joint Forces (Anti-Terrorist Operation and Operation Joint Forces, are the terms utilized by the Government of Ukraine to find military actions conducted since April 2014 against pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine – ed.)?

Let's say at first we had waves of people, volunteers, who were never professional soldiers. These first waves were practiced by our instructors on the ground and in training centers in Plains, Lviv or Kiev and in another locations. My squad worked very hard in the Plain to train many soldiers. At the same time, the first IFAKi (Individual First Aid Kit) reached Ukraine as a individual first aid kit, utilized primarily by soldiers and military personnel – ed.) from the United States, and we had to show all these people how to decently usage them. Our instructors were besides active in action on the front at the time. We conducted many trainings, not only in the Plain, but besides in the East, and we worked with peculiar forces and safety services.

I would like to ask you chronologically what happened after February 2022, after a full-scale invasion – what did your commitment to this conflict phase look like?

In the first days of the invasion, we joined the forces of the territorial defence in the Plain, and again trained whom we could, due to the successive stages of mobilization. We conducted 3 trainings a day for over a month, at the same time organizing a medical squad for our territorial defence team. During this time, we co-created a plan to defend the city and the region – a plan to safe medical people, teams, facilities, resources. These were highly crucial actions in the first days of the war. Now equal is no longer at hazard as before, but it can inactive change.

Have you mentioned something about global cooperation – what are your actions in this field today? Are you receiving any form of aid from abroad?

We found friends and support at the hardest minute for us. any of our relationships are based on social media and global Facebook groups. It was there that we placed our requests for support, to which respective people from Poland responded and provided us with quite a few help. For example, our friends from the Polish Iron Foundation not only provided us with individual or medical protection equipment, but besides fresh valuable contacts, which was and is highly crucial to us.

What challenges do you face? What problems do you face? Is there a imagination for the future of your organization?

I think our biggest challenge is simple, everyday problems. People don't think medicine is that important. You can find quite a few large guys who think that if they can aim and shoot, that's adequate and don't gotta think about first aid. It's a large problem for us to explain these grounds and to get to consciousness. The challenges are besides organisational and structural issues in the military – at all level we gotta explain why it is so crucial and to break the current patterns. By February 2022 90% of the training time was devoted to this proverbial “targeting and shooting” and only 10% to anything associated with medical assistance. We're inactive having problem with the equipment. We're moving out of force bands or research. Despite a full-scale war, we have respective bands manufacturers, but not all of these products are satisfactory quality. Those who make good equipment are in turn incapable to supply it in the essential quantities. Many besides believe that if they have a tourniquet, they are immortal. However, the deficiency of appropriate training and preparation to usage even specified simple items results in many amputations or paralysis of limbs. I see it in my work practically all day. This is simply a very sad situation, and possibly it would be better if we reduced evacuation time. However, we inactive do not have adequate armored vehicles and the situation in the east does not facilitate the transport of the injured. besides many artillery shellings, raids or drones, make rescue teams incapable to scope and evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield. I had many patients who had to wait 8 or 10 hours or sometimes even 2 days. You can imagine the effects. This is not the war we watch in the American films about Afghanistan, where the chopper arrives after a fewer minutes and evacuates the wounded. This is impossible here, due to the fact that even a tiny FPV drone can harm or destruct specified a helicopter. So we must constantly improve our procedures and we cannot trust entirely on the US TCCC protocols, due to the fact that we are fighting a war in a completely different environment and conditions. All the American soldiers from the global Legion, with whom I had the chance to speak, admit that this war is something completely different than what they have experienced so far. So we request to share our experience and cognition with the full planet to improve procedures. Now we have a better situation and better results. There is simply a peculiar training center organized by the Ministry of Defence and many people and instructors are constantly trained there. We now have many certified and experienced teacher teams at our disposal, and they are not people who just read the article online and started training on this basis, but people who know precisely what they are doing and are large at it.

From what you have experienced and seen so far – where do you think this conflict is going? What could happen?

I think this war is simply a war to destruct and fight for life. If we lose our lives and our hope. The worst part is knowing that many people, including my friends, have given their lives in this war, and others are inactive dying and will be killed. We must fight due to the fact that all these victims will mean nothing if we surrender. This is simply a very serious question and a very serious substance – what to do to proceed to fight and defend our independency and life. Most Ukrainians, as I do, believe that Russia will not halt and satisfy its current prey, but will want to devour us part by piece. That is why we cannot halt fighting and erstwhile I say "we" I do not mean only Ukraine but besides the full Western civilized world. I don't think we can last long under these conditions without Western support.