22-year-old Reuben Mawick continued his Russian war against Ukraine, even before a full-scale invasion, despite his lack of personal ties with the country. When Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, Reuben was less shocked than many others.
“I remember seeing images of missile attacks in Kiev at 5am. People fleeing, Russian tanks are crossing the border. That’s when I wanted to go.”
But at the time he was not yet a trained paramedic.
It will take another year for him to travel to Ukraine for the first time. He conducted online interviews with various aid organizations until he found something he felt reliable.
The 20-year-old at the time did not step in a cold foot on his long journey from Dortmund to Ukraine. “I’m glad I took that step,” Reuben says today. “I think I prepared myself as much as I could when I’ve never experienced war.”
“As soon as something moves, it’s time to shoot.”
Reuben’s destination was in Dnipro, Kiev, southeast of the capital.
“But the plan changed when Kakhovkadam exploded. Instead, I headed south and met another team there. After that, I went to my first mission,” he recalled.
“We had to be found and hidden right away by drones,” says Reuben. I felt that danger was real and that death was always there. The further the group went, the greater the impact it became.
“A checkpoint about 200 metres hit us,” recalled Reuben. The only alternative route across the mined field.
“There was no way to get through without taking risks. Russian reconnaissance is accurate. Their drones can find vehicles from a few kilometres away. A fire will start as soon as something moves.
To escape unharmed, the group waited for a lull in artillery fire. “We counted strikes and when there was a tactical volley rather than a continuous fire – a 30-40-second gap, we moved.”
They heard another influence and then a brief silence continued. Reuben took it as an indication that the artillery had been repositioned. “We ran through the checkpoint just in time. A few seconds after we passed, the next shell hit.”
“Too many people, too big, no control.”
Reuben had no intention of staying in Ukraine for a long time. His trips usually lasted between three and six weeks. He describes his first return as “struggling.”
“When you leave Ukraine, you notice immediately. There are no checkpoints, no one is talking about war. There’s no sense that something might happen,” Reuben said.
Shortly after returning, he attended a shooting festival in Germany and experienced a panic attack.
“Too many people, loud, no control,” he realized. In Ukraine, large crowds often mean danger. They are frequent targets of Russian attacks.
“She was born during the war. She knows nothing else.”
Despite everything, it was clear that Reuben would return. In the summer of 2023 he set out on his second mission to Ukraine. This time there is a new NGO operating in the eastern part of the country.
For a 22-year-old German, it’s difficult to accept that the places he once felt relatively safe are now at the forefront.
“The hardest part of me is the people I met there: the children in the village who were given sweets.
He was particularly moved by the little girl he met in one of the villages. They did not share the language, but they sat on the floor drawing with Chalk.
“I keep watching this six or seven year old girl who wobbles with every explosion,” he said. “She was born into war. She knew nothing else.”
The girl gave Reuben a soft toy. He doesn’t know what happened to her. “I tried to find it, but there are so many stories and so many lives are affected every day, so it’s easy to lose the track.”
Reuben couldn’t shake the memories of their encounter. For him, her situation felt fundamentally unfair. “She had done nothing wrong. She was just playing, but she still had to suffer.”
A story like her only deepens Reuben’s determination to continue helping.
September 9, 2023
There’s a day that Reuben won’t forget: September 9, 2023.
Alongside fellow volunteers, Emma, Johan and Tonko, he set out for Bahmut. “We knew the mission was dangerous,” Reuben told Euroneus.
Before they left, he asked Tonko if he could sit behind the driver. We thought it was the safest place for vehicles. “It was a British car so the driver sat on the right. The snipers usually aim for the left side,” Tonko told him he could sit wherever he wanted.
“The closer we got, the more we saw destruction. It was quiet, we didn’t hear the shelling.” The group was between Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar. Reuben recalls the roads scattered with shipwrecked military vehicles, humvees and cars, but none of them rusted and newly destroyed.
“Some people still had fresh food. I remember the perfect, unturned melons. I wouldn’t have been there for more than a week,” Reuben said. It was the moment he realized something was wrong. But by then they had reached the return point.
They rated that Russian FPV drones pose the greatest risk. Their only option was to keep moving. “It would have been even more dangerous to stop and turn around, so we continued.”
Light off
“And at almost exactly 11:30, a Russian anti-tank missile struck the left side of our vehicle.” He did not see or hear the missile or explosion. Just a beep.
“All of a sudden it all turned black. I was sure I was dead. Then I felt a piece of metal piercing my body.”
His life flashed right in front of him, but he didn’t panic. He was oddly calm. “I thought: I’m 20 years old. It’s really not cool to die now. But I can’t change it. I have to accept it.”
He then saw the flames and realized that if he wanted to survive, he had to get out of the car. He began to raw, instinctively heading towards the light.
“I could see a bit of sunlight, not fire, it was just another light. There were crushed windows and no hard ground I stepped into, but I managed to squeeze it out.
“Then there was another little deflagration, Fireball. Then I finally made it.” To his own surprise, he was still able to stand. From that moment on, survival mode began.
“What if the Russians came and took me alive?”
“I just had to work,” Reuben said. “I thought: OK, I have serious burns. It wasn’t splattering, but blood was running down my right shoulder. I put my hands in my mouth if my teeth were still there, if my jaw was unharmed. Everything was paralyzed.”
His right hand burned badly, his left to tease with a rap shotgun. “I barely held anything.”
He began to evaluate himself more, but his hands were so bloody that he didn’t know where the blood was coming from.
Looking into Bahmut’s direction, a terrifying thought crossed his mind.
In Reuben’s case, there was only one option in that case. You are taking your own life.
“I looked for a knife so I could kill myself once it was that. Captives weren’t an option. I don’t think they’re strong enough for it. I know what they do to me. I’m the perfect target for their hatred.
But the knife is gone. If the Russian car had appeared afterwards, Reuben asked himself that he would hit the surrounding fields, hoping there would still be a mine to finish it soon.
But the Russian soldiers came.
Reuben circles the wreckage and sees Johan trying to pull Tonko out of the car. “Johan, like me, had burns to his life-threatening arm and leg,” recalled Reuben. But they had to prioritize what they could kill first.
Tonko was in much worse condition. “He suffered severe burns to the face, severe injuries to his hands, and most of his right leg was under his knee,” Reuben knew he had to act fast. Within seconds he applied a tourniquet.
While dealing with his friend, Reuben realizes that his hands are failing him. “The rap shotgun must have damaged the nerves. I had this terrible feeling of numbness.
Meanwhile, Johann went to search for Emma, but she was not found anywhere. Despite the confusion, he remained surprisingly calm. Tonko tried to speak, but Reuben couldn’t know the words, he was still deaf by the explosion.
Then Tonko began to rawen on the road. “We were just attacked,” Reuben said. “The Russians can see us now,” he thought. He cried out Tonko for him to come back.
“Who’s coming here to save us?”
Tonko’s injuries were so serious that Reuben knew he couldn’t handle them on site. He also understood that the Russian troops could attack the group again.
“If they notice that there are survivors here, if Tonko does it when it raw onto the road, they will continue to fire at us. There are no survivors among the Russians.
Reuben knew they needed medical help early, but waiting was not an option. “Who’s coming here to save us?” he wondered.
He decides that he and Johan must go to get Tonko’s help and escape the immediate danger. With their own injuries, they knew they could not carry him.
The rocket hit the vehicle from the left, so Reuben and Johan were sure Emma was already dead.
They raw the first kilometres along the country road and stayed at the sideditch. “I remember exactly the grass blade. The tall grass dug into my open wound. It felt like a razor blade.”
Everywhere on the left and right there were small butterfly mines. After a while, Reuben switched to the road. There, the trees became more dense and more cars were scattered across the ditch. “That’s when you realize you’re getting more difficult to breathe.”
He threw away his plate carrier, helmet and goggles.
“The effects started again,” he said, with his hearing loss, and Reuben was unable to judge their proximity. The Ukrainian soldiers will then tell him that the explosion had landed just 50 meters away.
Despite the danger, Reuben and Johan continued to move, keeping their distance from each other. “One of us stepped into the mine, and we were away, so only one of us died.”
“I had a wild idea: what if I die here? How do I know my family?” Reuben reflects today.
Four kilometres later they reached the battlefield. Some water bottles have been abandoned to the ground, some have been broken. “We grabbed the bottle and drank what we could.”
Their fallen friends were never far from their hearts. They later learn that Emma died instantly as the rocket hit her. “For us, a good death is death soon.”
After a while, Johann and Reuben spotted a Ukrainian vehicle with Ukrainian soldiers. “We were recognized as humanitarian workers and they took us to the supply points where I normally helped.”
Reuben later learns that they had been deployed on a Ukrainian drone, and the team is sent out immediately. He had no idea about the drone. “It could have been a Russian drone,” the 22-year-old said.
Upon reaching the base, the two were treated quickly, but soon revealed that their two friends were still on the impact site. “I suddenly felt cold. I wasn’t in pain, but I couldn’t feel my hands.”
The idea of leaving someone behind the ghost Reuben. He was told the team was sent out quickly, but the Tonko was already dead when he arrived.
The team arrived at the site about the same time they met the Ukrainian soldiers. Reuben believes that if he and Johan had tried to take Tonko with them, they would not have been able to help him. This perception helped Reuben accept the death of his friend.
“I was very sorry that he was alone when he died. But if I had stayed there, I would have probably been killed by a Russian drone.”
The first few nights in the hospital were tough for Reuben. It was difficult to sleep due to burns, and whenever he managed to fall asleep, a nightmare began.
“In my dreams I saw a friend who was still alive. In those dreams, I had a wound on my feet, so I thought I was hit again.”
“I have to continue.”
After the attack, Reuben left Ukraine for some time and was taken to his hometown of Dortmund, Dortmund, for treatment.
A month and a half later, Reuben had his first treatment session in Germany.
“I knew something was coming. I wanted to be supported while I was there, not waiting to find something later. Getting a therapy spot in Germany is not easy.”
He considers this treatment to be one of the reasons why he doesn’t experience flashbacks of attacks during the day. “Like a drone, you don’t hear anything during the day. I’m not, but when you hear a certain noise, you realize something passively happens.”
What helps him most is to talk about what he has experienced. Reuben is now mostly recovering from his injuries. The wound is difficult, but it does not affect his movements as it does not exceed the joint. He still has 40-50 rap shotguns on his body. “I still have some of the bones from Emma in my jaw. It was caused by the missile trajectory.”
Despite the injuries and attacks, Reuben has since returned to Ukraine several times to assist with rescue missions. He believes that he is back another important factor in agreeing with what he has experienced.
He added: “Unfortunately, just because I was injured the war was not over. I realized that something could happen at any time, but the deaths of the children there didn’t stop.
For now, Reuben believes that collecting donations to Ukraine would be more useful in Germany. However, he never ruled out the possibility of returning to Ukraine.
