Weary of euphoric illusions, having lost her love, 28-year old lieutenant Alina Mykhailova makes an impassioned plea: Ukraine needs an unflinching yet hopeful realism to carry on.
From Euromaiden Press BY ORYSIA HRUDKA
During the Young Leaders Forum at Yalta European Strategy, Alina Mykhaylova, a young lieutenant and the head of the medical unit in the “Wolves of Vinci” battalion, shared her experiences in the Ukrainian military and underscored the significance of conveying a balanced perspective on the ongoing war.
Alina Mykhailova is a young lieutenant and the head of the medical unit in the “Wolves of Vinci” battalion, part of the 67th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. She also serves as a deputy in the Kyiv City Council.
Alina’s involvement in the war started when she was only 19 years old, back in 2014, initially as a volunteer and later, from 2016 onward, as a paramedic in the “Hospitallers” unit. Within a year, she established a medical service following NATO standards in the Detached Operational Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (now part of the “Wolves of Vinci” battalion). In 2022, Alina Mykhaylova was recognized as one of the “30 under 30: Faces of the Future” by Forbes.
In 2017, she entered into a relationship with Ukrainian volunteer and the commander of the 1st Separate Volunteer Battalion “Wolves of Vinci,” Hero of Ukraine Dmytro Kotsiubaylo, who tragically lost his life on 7 March 2023, during the battles for Bakhmut, sustaining shrapnel wounds to the neck with a tracheal rupture.
Voice of Ukraine 
One response to “10/20/2023 – “Not how it looks in motivational videos”: Ukrainian combat medic dispels myths about war”
J.R.R.Tolkien, writes to his son, April 30, 1944
“The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, it is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not, is and will be necessary to face in an evil world.
“I sometimes feel appalled at the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment; the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, nearly the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense, dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil, historically considered. But the historical view is not, of course, the only one. All thing and deeds have value in themselves, quite apart from ’causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening in the present ‘sub specie aeternitatis’..
..But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God
And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human endurance and courage is stupendeous, isnt it?) and all of our religious faith to endure the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills), still we may pray and hope. I do.”
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