Leaving The Syrian War, This Doctor Is Now Treating Victims Of The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Ossama Jari. (Instagram / @ jariossama)

JAKARTA - Syrian doctor Ossama Jari fled Damascus in 2014, to find peace with his Ukrainian wife in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv. But now the war and the Russian bombs have caught up with him.

At an ophthalmology clinic in the city's northeastern Ingulski district, Jari took cover for safety with other staff and patients in a basement filled with mattresses and jerry cans of water during the merciless bombardment at night from Friday to Saturday.

Although no deaths were reported, windows were shattered, the ground was covered with shells, and the boiler room around the site was hit by gunfire.

"I can't believe it. We live peacefully here. What are the Russians doing? What are they trying to save us from? From themselves?," the Jordan Times quoted AFP from March 14 as saying.

Even though his tired eyes can't be covered behind his glasses and he doesn't really wear 'doctor's work clothes', wears a nautical patterned shirt, Jari still tries to treat patients

This is the fate of doctors who were forced to flee their war-torn homeland during the civil war there, where Russia intervened in 2015 to prop up President Bashar Assad's regime.

Ukrainians carry an elderly woman to flee the Russian invasion. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA/Yan Bochat)

Jari and his wife, whom he met while he was studying medicine in Ukraine, fled the Syrian capital to find peace in Mykolaiv. What power, war followed them.

"Syria and Ukraine are in the same situation now. War is war, whether it is there, here or elsewhere, and it is the worst thing you can imagine," he said, adding he was not interested in talking about politics, including Russia. and his government.

Fingers go up to examine some patients. Among them is a 14-year-old boy named Timur, watched over by his mother Natalia Malichka.

In the first days of the war, Timur got a splinter in his eye while chopping wood with his grandfather. Unable to immediately go to the hospital because there were no buses operating, the teenager's eyes got worse.

Timur remained silent as his mother, shaking, said she was also worried about her two other sons, aged 10 and 20, at home.

"When I was here with Timur, I knew my baby was at home and I didn't know if I would see him again. I was torn apart," said Malichka. He and two other boys were at home when the neighborhood was bombed.

"I was reassured because I knew Timur was in the basement of the hospital with the doctors. But even so, he called me, he was terrified," said Malichka.

"Everything was shaking. We didn't know if we would find the hospital still standing when we came back from the basement," said hospital director Krasimira Rilkova, who looked just as tired as Jari.

To note, Mykolaiv, a city of about 500.000, hindered the Russian campaign to seize the Black Sea port of Odessa. For several days, Ukrainian troops managed to contain the advance of Russian troops who surrounded the city.