ZDF’s report from Ukraine features PFVMH
The work of the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital was a significant part of the report from Ukraine published last week by ZDF, a major German public-service television broadcaster.
ZDF correspondent Katrin Eigendorf visited Kyiv and front-line locations, where she interviewed the PFVMH president, Gennady Druzenko, and volunteer medics, as well as Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky and fighters using drones to target the enemy. She also spoke with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, MP Yulia Tymoshenko, and renowned singer Ruslana Lyzhychko.
The report mentioned PFVMH several times — at its field base a few kilometers from the front line and in Kyiv — and even included archival videos from ten years ago when Gennady was one of the organizers of training for reservists at the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
One of the central questions that the German journalist sought to answer was whether Ukrainians remained motivated to continue the struggle and win the war.
“Where do you get your optimism?” she asked the PFVMH leader.
“Ukraine’s chances of survival in 2014 and 2022 were close to zero,” Druzenko said. “If it were a rational system, then Ukraine would no longer exist. We learn how to find the best answers to questions that no one has ever answered. I always say that if we succeed with PFVMH, our small community, one day we may succeed with the country.”
The importance of this report’s release on ZDF, one of the leading German TV channels, whose management, according to Ukrainian Wikipedia, takes a pro-Russian and Ukrainophobic stance, cannot be overstated.
“This is ‘central television’ here; everyone is watching,” wrote one of the report’s characters, anesthesiologist Diana Podolska, who currently lives and works in Germany, to Gennady Druzenko. “I was already told at the cash register in a store that they saw me on TV. And they already know your name! It’s really very good that Katrin did this report. To remind us that the war continues.”
