You're reading: The ‘angel’ who speeds through war zone in an ambulance

Galyna Almazova's nickname is Viterets, which is "breeze" in Ukrainian.

Looking at her, one might think it is due to her slim and graceful appearance. But she is compared to the wind for another reason: A race car driver, she now speeds through the Donbas war zone, driving an ambulance at breakneck speed, picking up injured soldiers – as well as the bodies of those who have been killed.

Over almost two years – since the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas – Almazova has spent only one week a month at home, in Kyiv, and the rest of the time in the war zone. A top manager at a trading company, she now does most of her work over the Internet.

Race-car driver

Almazova’s big passion – car racing – proved useful. In the past, she performed in several professional rallies, including European rally cup stage in Yalta in 2013.

The racing experience comes handy when she drives her ambulance car through the war zone.

“It’s not just helping. Sometimes it saves live,” Almazova told the Kyiv Post, adding that she often has to ride the bad roads in the darkness and very fast.

Ukrainian magazine Focus in 2014 put Almazova and several other female volunteers in its annual list of the Top 100 most powerful women in Ukraine.

It wasn’t the first time she made the news. In 2008, Almazova was driving a mountain road in Crimea when she saw a parked car without a driver that was slowly rolling down the hill. She pulled over, jumped into the driver’s seat and stopped the car before it fell off a cliff, saving the two children in the back seat. Their parents had been enjoying the view nearby.

However, she says soldiers who see her for the first time still raise their eyebrows when she gets out of the ambulance.

Galyna Almazova drives an ambulance car near Sukha Balka, a village in Donetsk Oblast in November. (Courtesy)

Volunteer ‘angels’

“They see me and wonder: ‘And where is your driver?’” Almazova told the Kyiv Post.

The soldiers often call women volunteers “angels,” she says. But they think war is men’s business, and find it surprising that women would want to be there.

“They don’t get why we, volunteers, go there – without any status, without state financing, without rewards,” Almazova says.

Ukrainian soldier Serhiy Holtva first met Almazova in the summer of 2014 near Krasnohorinka, a city in Donetsk Oblast. He told the Kyiv Post it was hard to believe at first that such a slight woman could be doing such a dangerous job.

“Later I started to think of her as a combat partner rather than a woman,” Holtva says. “She was with us when we were being shelled. She wasn’t lying next to us in trenches, but she was waiting nearby, in case someone needed medical aid.”

The ambulance she drives, as well as the medical equipment in it, was bought with the donations raised by volunteers.

Weary of war

Almazova admitted that war charity donations have been shrinking lately, as people are weary of war. Moreover, official and media reports do not show the war as it really is, Almazova said, which makes people think it is nearly over.

“People meet me and ask: ‘Galya, what are you doing there? There is no war.’ But whose bodies are we bringing back then?” she says.

Declining coverage

She says that media don’t cover the losses of Ukrainian army as much as before, and the authorities understate the casualties. While Ukraine’s authorities have reported four soldiers being killed in 2016, Almazova says fighters are injured every day, and “almost every day somebody is killed.”

“You bring back a killed soldier from the war zone. You see his body wrapped in the special bag. You publish a post about it on Facebook, and then you receive messages saying that you’ve made it all up,” she said. “Amazing.”

While officially the cease-fire that was part of the Minsk agreements came in force on Sept. 1 last year, in reality the war zone in the Donbas never went quiet. Monitors with Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe continually report cease-fire violations.

Almazova says that while it’s difficult for her to stay in the war zone for long, it’s almost impossible to stay in Kyiv, as she can’t stop thinking of the soldiers who need her help.

Holtva says Almazova always goes to where the fighting is worst.

Seeks action

“If the cease-fire is working here, she looks for a place where there is action. Well, of course, officially there’s cease-fire everywhere,” he says. “However, she still finds places where (soldiers) need help.”

Many soldiers who come back from the war also find it difficult to stay at home, but for another reason, according to Almazova. They struggle to find a place in civilian life: to get a job, and to explain their emotional state to their family. Even getting the much-needed military identification documents that allow them to obtain state benefits is often a problem.

“Now that the seventh wave of mobilization is approaching, many guys I met during the first (wave) keep saying: ‘Expect us in the seventh wave – we’re coming back,’” Almazova says.