Yuliia Paievska — 'We don't fight against the wounded'

This article features in The EU's Unsung Heroes, read the full magazine here.

Moscow’s war on Ukraine has been marked by the surprising brutality of Russian forces and resilience of Ukrainian fighters, but one of its heroes is a woman who has been saving lives on both sides for over 10 years. 

Yuliia Paievska is a 56-year-old Ukrainian martial arts coach and paramedic who is also known by her nom-de-guerre, ‘Taira’ (a nickname she first used in the online game World of Warcraft). 

Her activism began in the winter of 2013, when she worked as a volunteer helping protesters who were being attacked by police in Kyiv's pro-democracy protests, and she has not stopped since.

“I have now joined the ‘Khartia’ brigade of the National Guard as an officer responsible for moral and psychological support,” she tells EUobserver. “My task is to maintain morale and fighting spirit. I also take care of the wounded.”

When Russia first invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, Paievska moved to the frontline to train over 100 other medical volunteers in a group which became known as ‘Taira's Angels’ and which helped not just Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, but also wounded Ukrainian separatist fighters and Russian soldiers. 

She briefly joined the Ukrainian army between 2018 and 2020, when she commanded a mobile military hospital in Mariupol, before returning to volunteer in the city.

And she was there during the Siege of Mariupol in February and March 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion, where she recorded her work on a body cam, and where she was captured on 16 March by Russian soldiers while trying to help a bus-load of women and children to flee to safety.  

Paievska is not popularly known in the West, but she has long been a big personality to those with an interest in the war. 

She was in Ukraine’s team in the Invictus Games for wounded veterans (she has two hip replacements due to a battlefield injury) and wore the body cam in Mariupol because the Invictus patron, Britain’s prince Harry, was producing a Netflix documentary about inspirational people.

But it was the popularity of Taira’s Angels and Paievska’s signature look — short blond hair and arms full of tattoos — which saw the Russian soldiers recognise her on the Mariupol bus and drag her off to captivity. 

When she was released in a prisoner swap in June 2022, her freedom was announced by Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky to boost national morale.

She also received the International Women of Courage Award from the then US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in the White House in 2023, who noted that Kremlin propaganda had “maligned her … as a fascist and war criminal”. And, right on cue, the Russian ambassador to the US at the time called her a “terrorist thug”.   

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked EU governments and the general public and turned into a conflict on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II.  

By March 2023, for instance, the two sides were firing over 50,000 artillery shells a day at each other in eastern Ukraine, reminding war historians of the second battle of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942.  

But what caused equal surprise was the level of Russian cruelty toward Ukrainian civilians, despite the two countries’ close cultural ties. It became abundantly clear after the massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in April 2022. 

But Paievska’s body cam footage, which was smuggled out of Mariupol by AP reporters on a memory card prior to her capture, became one of the war’s first documents of Russian atrocities against women and children. 

And Paievska’s own treatment in captivity testified to more of the same. She was held for three months in a freezing cold, three-by-six-metre cell with 21 other women, never let outside, never able to change clothes, and allowed just once to have a shower. She was also repeatedly interrogated, beaten, forced to sing the Russian anthem, and told lies that Kyiv had fallen to Russia. 

“A person who has never been through something like this cannot even begin to imagine what prisoners go through. Not even remotely,” she said.

But if her Mariupol body cam had recorded Russian brutality, it also created a document of Ukrainians’ enduring humanity. 

In one clip, Paievska, the battle-hardened frontline medic, is seen nursing an infant boy, who died in her arms, prompting her to burst out crying against a wall, before turning back to him and saying “I hate this”, as she closed his eyes. 

But in another clip, Paievska was seen asking staff to wrap a cold and wounded Russian soldier in a blanket, while telling him: “We treat everyone equally”.

“During the battles for Mariupol and earlier, I provided medical assistance to wounded Russian soldiers. The medical aid was given in full accordance with current protocols, as required by the rules of war,” she tells EUobserver.  “We do not fight against the wounded.”

“It never even crossed my mind to take any action that could harm them, either morally or physically. I am a medic, and I acted as a medic,” Paiveska said. “Of course, the occupiers did not evoke any sympathy, but there was no aggression either.”

And yet, as the war drags on into its 11th year, Paiveska’s medical vocation toward wounded fighters has become mixed with harsher feelings toward wider Russian society. 

“There can be no trust in the future [between Ukrainians and Russians], first of all because of the widespread support by ordinary Russians for unprovoked aggression and mass crimes against humanity,” she says. “They will never be trusted.”

And in line with her new task to give Ukrainians “moral and psychological” strength, Paievska also voiced love for doctors on the frontlines of other wars around the world, such as Gaza and Sudan. 

“I fully support with all my heart the humanitarian mission of medics, wherever they are,” she said. “The Lord sees everything, and He will remember it all,” Paievska tells EUobserver. 

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