By Galina Korol | 2025-11-10

When Kyiv obstetrician and gynecologist Sergey Baksheev first returned to Ukraine's liberated towns, he found hospital walls blown open and gynecological chairs twisted into metal wreckage. That sight stayed with him.

Months later, he would bolt a new one -- bright pink -- into the back of a van and drive it into the war-scarred villages where women had been left without care.

Baksheev and his colleagues call it the Woman Mobile, a traveling clinic that brings medical help, compassion and a trace of normal life to places without hospitals or even electricity.

The idea took shape during the first chaotic days of Russia's invasion. Volunteering in a Kyiv maternity hospital, Baksheev delivered babies in the basement as missiles fell overhead. Between deliveries, he photographed the women and newborns -- fragments of life amid the bombardment.

He was among the first doctors to enter the de-occupied cities of Kherson and Kharkiv, where he found destroyed wards and bombed equipment.

"I even made a photo report of the gynecological chairs that had been hit," he told Kontur. "Then I realized -- a gynecologist needs a chair. It's impossible to work without one. That's how the Woman Mobile was born."

A pink chair amid military gray

It took six months for the Woman Mobile to move from idea to reality -- an ordinary ambulance rebuilt into a working gynecology clinic. The challenge was simple but relentless: fit everything a doctor might need to examine and treat patients into a few cramped square feet.

Inside the van, nothing is improvised. The Woman Mobile carries an ultrasound machine, a colposcope and endoscopic tools. Its power system is completely autonomous, able to function without any connection to a grid that so often fails.

"This isn't just a car with medical gear," Baksheev said. "It's a vehicle with a real gynecological chair and professional equipment, which lets us give a high-quality diagnosis from the very first visit."

But it was just as important to make the space feel human.

"When we had to choose the chair, what kind and what color -- well, obviously, we chose pink," Elena Belko, the maternity nurse who works alongside Baksheev, told Kontur. "There's so much gray and black in this world. We wanted to bring back some color."

Belko is also the driver. No mission is complete without her at the wheel. Together, she and Baksheev have provided more than 1,500 free consultations in villages near the front line and across de-occupied regions.

For the women they visit, the clinic's arrival can mean the difference between care and neglect. Many have gone months or even years without seeing a doctor. Some can't afford to travel to regional hospitals; others have no transportation left to take them there.

"These women often feel forgotten," Belko said. "When the van comes to them, it's a lifeline."

The work rarely ends with a single visit.

"We try not to abandon women after an appointment," Belko said. "Sergey personally calls his colleagues in hospitals and hands patients off to them. It’' not a one-time examination -- it's ongoing care."

Their trips are filled with stories that blur tragedy and resilience: a grandmother who buried her grandson during the occupation, a displaced woman who refused to evacuate without her dogs. Yet the memory that lingers most for the volunteers is gratitude, often expressed in small, tender gestures.

"People come and try to feed me some kind of pie," Belko said with a smile.

She recalled a trip to the Sumy region, where a local man brought them a huge pot of borscht, apologizing for how it looked.

"You could see how nervous he was," she said. "So we told him to pour the rest into a jar for us, because it was so good. Only then did he relax."

A personal story

For Baksheev, the Woman Mobile is a reflection of how Ukraine's doctors are learning to practice in wartime -- to help people not only survive, but live.

In August 2024, Baksheev learned he had pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis came early, and his colleagues abroad urged him to seek treatment outside Ukraine. But he refused.

"They told me, 'Sergey, the surgery you need is one of the most complex abdominal operations,'" he said. "I told them there are world-class surgeons in Ukraine. I can have it done here."

Even after the diagnosis, he didn't step away from his work. Between rounds of chemotherapy, he continued to drive the Woman Mobile to front-line villages, examining patients and mentoring younger doctors.

"I decided to talk about my diagnosis openly," he said. "I started writing about it a lot." What began as personal reflection soon became a public campaign that encouraged women -- and fellow physicians -- to get checked.

"Five of my patients and colleagues were later diagnosed with breast cancer at an early stage," he said.

To Baksheev, volunteer medicine has become both a calling and a classroom.

"A doctor in the 21st century must be versatile during wartime," he said. "Even if you're not at the front, you have to be able to do different things, to work by new methods, to be ready to take another doctor's place. You never know when or where the next missile will land."