Life on the Frontline: A Dutch Veterinarian’s Journey Through Ukraine

By Angela Stoop, Special Correspondent for the Lviv Herald

When the first images of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached my village in the Netherlands, I was struck by the sheer scale of the devastation. The instinct to help overcame every hesitation. I was trained as a veterinary medic, not as a soldier, diplomat, or aid official. Yet within weeks, I was volunteering in convoys that brought food and medical supplies into a country under relentless attack. That was the beginning of a journey that has taken me up and down Ukraine’s embattled front line, where my veterinary training has been tested in ways I never anticipated.

Animals as lifelines in wartime

Many outsiders do not realise the extent to which animals remain central to daily life in rural Ukraine. In peacetime, livestock are the bedrock of small-scale farming economies. In wartime, they become even more vital: a single cow may mean milk for a family, a horse may be the only reliable means of transport across fields pitted with shell craters, and a guard dog may offer protection when electricity, fences, or even doors are gone.

One farmer in Kharkiv region, whose cow I treated after she was wounded by shrapnel, grasped my hands and said: “You have not only saved our cow, you have saved us. She is our only source of milk, and without her we could not survive the winter.”

In Donetsk province, a soldier at a checkpoint stood proudly beside his dog as I administered a rabies vaccine. “She has been with me since the beginning,” he told me. “If I did not have her here, I do not know how I would bear this war. She keeps me alive, in spirit if not in body.”

And in Kherson, I stitched up the flank of a horse struck by fragments from a nearby explosion. The young girl who owned her whispered: “She is my best friend. If you save her, you save me too.”

From animals to people

I quickly discovered that medical knowledge in war zones does not respect professional boundaries. When bandages are scarce and doctors are far away, anyone with clinical training is asked to help. I have cleaned wounds of both soldiers and civilians, trained volunteers in the basics of haemorrhage control and shock management, and sat long nights by injured men whose only comfort was the presence of their trench dogs.

As one volunteer medic told me in Zaporizhzhia: “Here, we are all doctors when we must be. You treat cows and dogs, but you also treat us. It is the same work—keeping life alive.”

Volunteer networks and European solidarity

I am not alone in this work. A loose but growing network of veterinarians from across Europe has found its way to Ukraine. Some come on short rotations, others remain for months. Our efforts are coordinated with Ukrainian NGOs and local authorities, who know where the need is greatest. Supplies come from Dutch, German, and Polish charities, often crowd-funded by ordinary citizens who want to help but cannot travel themselves.

A Ukrainian aid worker in Mykolaiv told me: “We did not expect that veterinarians from Europe would come here. But you have shown us that every skill is useful. You care for the animals, and you care for us. This is solidarity.”

The dangers and doubts

The dangers are real. Travelling near the front means crossing military checkpoints, navigating mined roads, and listening for the sudden whistle of incoming shells. There are nights when I sleep in barns beside the animals I am treating, the air heavy with smoke, the horizon flashing with distant fire. There are mornings when I question whether one veterinarian can make any difference against the backdrop of such destruction.

Yet the moments of doubt are outweighed by the gratitude of those I serve. A young boy in a destroyed village hugged his ginger cat after I treated her for burns. “She is the only thing we saved from our house,” he said softly. “Thank you for saving her.”

Resilience across species

What I have learned is that resilience is not solely a human trait. Ukrainians and their animals endure together, each reinforcing the other’s will to survive. To heal one is to strengthen the other. Compassion, in this context, is not sentimental but strategic: it sustains households, communities, and even fighting units.

A legacy to carry home

One day I will return to my practice in the Netherlands. But I will not return unchanged. I will bring back stories of courage and fragility, of fields turned into battlefields yet still echoing with the lowing of cattle and the whinny of horses. I will speak of the extraordinary resilience of Ukrainians, who fight to preserve not just their freedom and their homes, but also the creatures that make those homes whole.

In the end, the lesson is simple. In war, everything conspires to reduce life to statistics and strategy. Yet what gives people the strength to continue is often profoundly ordinary: the warmth of a dog in the trench, the milk from a cow in the yard, the companionship of a cat in the ruins of a house. These are the details that sustain civilisation, even when civilisation itself is under attack.

It is my hope that in telling these stories, I can remind others in Europe that compassion is its own form of resistance, and that to stand with Ukraine is not only to defend territory, but to defend the bonds of life itself.