Participant of the regional contest "Young Person of the Year – 2025" in the nomination "Law and Order Defender" Akshin Salekhli
I am from Azerbaijan, I was born there. My parents moved here in 1998. The whole family is in Azerbaijan; only my mom, dad, my brother, and I are here. In 1998, my grandfather came here to trade; he was a private entrepreneur, and my father came to continue this business. During the full-scale war, my parents stayed in Ukraine, in the Donetsk region.
I am from the city of Hirnyk, near Marinka. I grew up there, went to school, and then joined the National Guard of Ukraine. I served as a medic in the medical unit in Kharkiv. After my service was over, I thought I would follow in my brother's footsteps and work in the police. That was, I think, in 2021. I studied to be an assistant detective in Mariupol and worked in Pokrovsk. Then I was transferred from there to work in Druzhkivka. And I'm still here... At the beginning of the full-scale war, they told me I would be a paramedic because I had once served as a medic in the medical unit.
My father is 60 years old now. He raised us, always saying that every man should serve in the army. I completed my conscription, served in the internal troops and the National Guard. I realized I liked military service and wanted to sign a contract. My father told me to leave the army, serve for six months, and if I still liked it, then I could sign. My brother was in the police, his wife was in the police, and I thought I could create a police dynasty. Now all of us are in the police, my girlfriend is in the police too.
It might sound silly now, but I like everything about it: it's interesting to study medicine, to help people; I get satisfaction from this and understand that it is absolutely my thing. It's mine... When there's a strike here, I'm the first to get dressed to go to the site. Sometimes we don't have an ambulance here, so we put people in our cars; we have blood all over us, the cars are full of blood, but you get to the stabilization point, you hand over the injured person, and you realize you've helped. That's a feeling... like a karma boost.
In 2022, I gave my car for repairs and borrowed my brother's. There was an incident: a man was cleaning gas cylinders with a grinder. A spark hit, and one cylinder exploded. The man had 100% burns. A woman was nearby, and an осколок from the cylinder tore off her calf. It was a critical bleed, so we applied a tourniquet. We called an ambulance, but we had to wait for them for a very long time. It started to pour rain. My brother's car, which I was driving, had a white interior. So we put her in the car; what else could we do? We even have a video of the rain pouring, and me leading this woman and putting her in the car. We arrived, took the woman to the hospital, and the nurse told us: "Look, your whole car interior is completely covered in blood." What's the big deal? I wiped down the car and drove on...
How do we work in general? We arrive, provide first aid, and evacuate people to the hospital as quickly as possible. In the beginning, we sort people, as our paramedic group leader, Oleksandr Savenko, taught us — into green, yellow, and red. We try to provide help as quickly as possible. And when all the wounded have been evacuated, the paramedic in me falls asleep, and the police officer wakes up. We document and search for the dead.
We work in Druzhkivka. We also had massive shelling there. Once, there were five or six hits in a matter of minutes. The strikes hit all over the city. We got into my colleague's old Mercedes: we'd arrive at a strike, shouting, "Are there any wounded?" Then we'd run 150 meters and shout again, "Are there any wounded?" If there were none, we'd move on to the next strike location. We looked for the wounded, then called the duty unit and reported.
Once, there was a shelling in Sofiivka, 15 kilometers from Druzhkivka. We arrived, and there were cluster bombs scattered everywhere, everything was on fire. A gas canister heated up so much it was almost boiling. We went to look for the wounded. My colleague came running and said, "Akshin, drop everything, run here urgently." My backpack weighs, maybe, 30 kilograms. And with it, I run 200 meters. I never ran so fast in school. Sometimes during the shelling, I surprise myself: I am 185 centimeters tall and weigh 110 kilograms, but in such situations, I run very fast.
A man and his wife were cleaning up their garden there. The man was sitting, with a fragment in his chest, and his wife was lying down. I checked her: a head injury... I tried to wrap it up somehow and called an ambulance, but while it was on its way, the woman died. And I tried to talk to the man, but he wasn't responding. I tried to sit him up, but he was all tensed up. I saw a hole in his chest and realized he had a tension pneumothorax: his chest was starting to swell like a ball. We had a bit of an argument with the ambulance medics there because they were so late. But they arrived, and I gave them the needle they needed to puncture the lung for a tension pneumothorax. I said, "Hold it, we're not allowed to do this, we don't have the right." And I gave her the needle, and she said, "No, I don't know how." Oh, my God! I asked the woman from the ambulance to step aside. Of course, it was all polite; we never argue or swear.
I put the man on the stretcher, turned on the light; there were a lot of people around. And I said to them, "Please, be quiet for two minutes." I'm a Muslim, and here I am, standing and twice reading "Our Father" out loud and puncturing his lung. That's it. And then I see that air is passing through, the chest is deflating. My supervisor was there; he was watching all this and asked: "Akshin, who are you? How did you do this?" Well, honestly, I don't puncture people's lungs every day. You know how to do it, between the 2nd and 3rd rib... But it's stressful, and you just think—God, I hope it all works out, because if he jerks now, if the needle goes the wrong way... Of course, you want to do good, but not to accidentally harm someone...
They took him to the hospital. At first, the doctors didn't understand what the hole in his chest was from. The next day, we went to visit him in the hospital. We arrived, and the man asked, "Where is my wife?" I stood there, looked at him, turned around, and walked away. I'm not a soft person, but how could I tell him? Later, the doctor informed him of his wife's death. I was in that area recently and dropped in on the man. "Hello," I said. He replied, "I recognize you." It's a small village with small houses in the fields, with no fences or anything. Just a simple family... I sat in the yard and asked him for some water; we drank it. He told me that his daughter had visited. I asked, "Maybe you need some help?" He replied, "I don't need anything, you've already helped me so much."