Polish Volunteer who Served as Combat Medic in Ukraine Rejected by Polish Army

A former Polish volunteer with the call sign Bur, who served as a military medic in Ukraine for two years, was refused recruitment into the Polish army.

Bur spoke about this on a podcast by the Polish publication Wiadomości Onet.

Bur spent two years on the Ukrainian-Russian front. He went to war in April 2022, after Russian troops were pushed back from Kyiv.

“I went without any experience. But once I was there, I had to find my role. I decided to become a military medic. In hindsight, I think it’s one of the most worthy roles in the military. Because saving lives is more valuable than taking them,” he says.

After training, the military medic quickly found himself on the front lines, fighting in the Serebriansky Forest, among other places. As the publication emphasizes, this experience made Bur an experienced tactical medicine instructor. He returned to Poland to teach others.

After returning from Ukraine, Bur joined the W Polskę foundation, headed by renowned Polish medic and instructor Damian Duda. He formed a team of experts to train military personnel, police officers, and special services personnel. All of them have real combat experience in Ukraine.

“We cooperate with the Territorial Defense Forces, elite units, and police anti-terrorists. We train people from the 1st Warsaw Armoured Brigade and the 25th Air Cavalry Brigade. It’s hard to find a unit with which we don’t have contact,” Bur lists.

According to him, the training is brutally realistic: in full gear, in mud, in trenches, and under fire. In addition, drones are actively involved in the training to accustom the military to the modern battlefield.

“We want them to see that in war there is no time for comfort and sterile conditions; the wounded must be dragged 300 meters in difficult conditions. And in war, it’s not 300 meters, but, for instance, seven kilometers. And then try to insert a catheter,” he explains.

After training hundreds of Polish soldiers, Bur decided to join the Polish army directly: “I thought: since the army uses my knowledge, maybe I can apply it from the inside.”

However, after passing a medical examination, he ‘failed’ the psychological tests. His second attempt at the test was successful, but he was rejected for recruitment due to his previous negative result.

As Damian Duda notes, in addition to ‘problems with bureaucracy,’ they also face opposition from the Military Counterintelligence Service, which constantly conducts investigations into the intelligence activities of volunteers in the units where they are trained by instructors.

As a reminder, Poland is preparing a draft law on amnesty for citizens who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine after the start of Russian aggression.

Under current legislation, serving in the army of another state without the permission of the Polish authorities is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.