Ukraine war ceasefire won't work, frontline medics warn

A US volunteer tells world affairs editor Sam Kiley why she doubts Russia's commitment to any peace deal, her fury at Donald Trump's betrayal, and why Ukraine will never give up

- Sam Kiley

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 Maciorowski, 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 was just 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.”