Kyiv has held a farewell ceremony for 50-year-old nurse Oksana Katerusha, who was killed during a massive air attack on the capital on the night of September 28, 2025. According to the report, nearly three dozen sites were damaged in that assault, while four civilians were killed and 17 others were injured.
Katerusha was buried after a service on October 1, the Feast of the Protection and Ukraine’s Day of Defenders. Her relatives brought her from the morgue in a closed coffin. During the memorial, family members and colleagues recalled that Oksana had been on duty at the Strazhesko Institute of Cardiology, Clinical and Regenerative Medicine when Kyiv came under almost twelve hours of drone and missile strikes.
At around eight in the morning, a drone hit the medical building. Colleagues said that patients and staff had spent the night in a shelter, but after the attack seemed to ease, Oksana went back up to the nurses’ station to enter information into the computer system. A patient who had been badly shaken by the explosions and sleepless night went upstairs with her. The strike hit the nurses’ station directly, killing both the nurse and the patient.
“The Hippocratic oath is your cross. Oksana carried that cross until the final minutes of her life,” the priest said at the service, addressing her colleagues.
Oksana Katerusha had worked at the Strazhesko Institute for 30 years. Professor Mykhailo Lutai, who had known her since she joined after medical college, described her as a “bright, highly qualified” person and said she had a gift for calming patients, many of whom are struggling with war, anxiety and chronic sleep deprivation. In his words, stress is not the sole cause of cardiovascular disease, but it can trigger its manifestation.
After the strike, windows in the ischemic heart disease department were blown out, doors and corridors were damaged, and part of the premises burned out. Patients were moved to other buildings, but scheduled admissions were not suspended. Sources also told the reporter that the drone had been equipped with cluster munitions with a delayed detonation mechanism, and the consequences could have been even worse.
Colleagues remembered Katerusha as someone who helped elderly patients order medicines, dealt with their phones and covered shifts for co-workers in difficult moments. Senior nurse Anna Opanasiuk said that shortly before her death Oksana had been trying to find another nurse for the department despite low pay and a heavy workload. Lab technician Natalia Viktorovna summed up the mood among the staff in a few words: “We will not abandon our work.”