The friendship between the Ukrainian nurse and the Russian student speaks to the whole world
by Martina D'Onofrio
11 April 2022 - There are the horrors caused by the war in Ukraine resonating in our daily lives, as if they were already part of a new normal. It seems absurd and yet the risk of becoming addicted to a new global 'tragedy', when the crisis linked to the pandemic has not yet ended, is what many sociologists and acute observers of reality are already denouncing. After all, the word 'pace' – which, represented in Italian, English and Ukrainian, illuminates the wall of the teaching building of our University – appears less pronounced and invoked than necessary, as the Holy Father Francis repeatedly underlines. And as Irina and Albina testify every day in the corridors of the Palliative Care Center 'Together in Care' of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital Foundation.
Irina is a Ukrainian nurse, in Italy since 2004, today she works in the hospice dedicated to patients in an advanced stage of the disease: "I am worried about my mother and my family who live in Ukraine, I hear from them every day and I try to support them with my possibilities”, he says in the first days of the war while in the following days he hastens to get his mother out of the country affected by the conflict to host her in Rome, together with some girls who will then take the direction of Spain to reunite with an aunt. “To this day I still can't believe how a conflict like this could have started without thinking about the people forced to leave their homes or go into hiding,” she says.
Echoing them, as if they were united by something that goes beyond a simple friendship, is Albina, a Russian student in the third year of the Nursing Degree Course UCBM, in Italy since 1998, trainee in the same corridors where Irina works. The two girls share the same passion for caring for the most fragile and are shocked by the news arriving from their countries of origin, so much so that Albina finds herself confessing at the outbreak of war 'that she is afraid that Irina was angry with her', to soon discover that human relationships can destroy any distance. “In this very difficult and shameful moment for humanity, I want to say that I am Russian and I love Ukraine”, he affirms with emotion. “I can't accept that children have to hide in dungeons and live in bunkers, right now my heart is with every Ukrainian mother and child”, he continues as he holds out his hand to Irina. The two colleagues and friends embrace each other: peace already exists here.
