The Syrians are not content to proclaim their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, victims, as they have been, of the brutality of the Russian army. Some of them, determined to put their money where their mouth is, are trying to provide it with concrete support.
This is the case of Mohamed Ghaleb Tinnary, a 42-year-old radiologist from Idlib, in northwestern Syria. This practitioner, who found refuge in France, in Dijon, a year and a half ago, has just returned from a four-day trip to Brovary, a suburb of kyiv. He brought, to the hospital of this locality, a shipment of medical equipment, worth about 20,000 dollars (18,300 euros), conveyed from the Polish border, on behalf of the Syrian American Medical Society ( SAMS).
“The fact that Syrians and Ukrainians are facing the same killer, the Russian army, with the same strategy, is an additional motivation”, Mohamed Ghaleb Tinnary, Syrian radiologist
This NGO, created by Syrian doctors living in the United States, has been at the forefront of assistance to the “liberated” areas in Syria. Conquered by the anti-Assad rebels between 2011 and 2012, these were exposed, from 2015, to systematic bombardments by the Russian air force. The shelling targeting schools and hospitals as well as military positions, intended to prevent the development of any civilian life in these areas, hastened their reconquest by pro-government forces.
A second shipment of aid, worth around ten times the value of the first shipment, should arrive in the coming weeks at Brovary hospital, again thanks to SAMS. Doctor Tinnary, who until 2020 directed the NGO’s branch in the province of Idlib, the last possession of the insurgents, came into contact with the Ukrainian establishment thanks to one of his classmates from Dijon: a refugee from kyiv, enrolled in the same French course as him.
“As an expert in war medicine, it was natural for me to be interested in the conflict in Ukrainehe says over the phone. But the fact that the Syrians and the Ukrainians are facing the same killer, the Russian army, pursuing the same strategy, that of scorched earth, is obviously an additional motivation. »
The “tutorials” of the white helmets
Samer Attar, a 46-year-old Syrian-American orthopedic surgeon, has been working for a week in Kharkiv hospital, also under the SAMS banner. The situation in the second city of Ukraine, disfigured by the strikes of the Russian army and in the process of encirclement, reminds him of the ordeal of Aleppo, where he carried out several missions. His round trips between Chicago, his city of residence, and the capital of northern Syria, ended in July 2016, when the siege of pro-Assad was closed on the city, six months before his reconquest under a deluge of Russian bombs.
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