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Viktoriia Honcharuk was living every young Manhattanite’s dream.
With a coveted role as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, the 22-year-old boasted a stunning Midtown apartment, a devoted boyfriend, and dinner dates at the city’s hottest restaurants with her high-flying finance pals.
“It was a dream come true for me,” Honcharuk, now 25, told The Post. “The crazy, perfect life.”
But in December 2022, in the space of just two weeks, the analyst, who is a Ukrainian citizen, went from partying at the swanky members-only club Zero Bond to triaging patients on the frontlines of her home country’s bloody war with Russia.
As an emergency combat nurse, Honcharuk has spent the past three years treating wounded soldiers who have lost legs, arms, and eyes in battle.
The former financier has come perilously close to being killed herself, having sustained multiple concussions, including one that occurred when Russian enemies dropped a glide bomb on an aid building that she was helping to evacuate.
Honcharuk has also witnessed countless deaths and has even cremated the bodies of three of her closest friends.
Still, she remains undeterred.
“Very quickly, I realized this is the place I want to be in,” she said, adding she’s found her life’s purpose in defending her country.
The medic has been documenting the war on her popular Instagram account, inspiring others to sign up for the fight — although, she says, that has brought its own guilt, knowing that those following her lead are risking their lives.
Honcharuk has been told is crazy by those she knows for ditching a dream job in the Big Apple to put herself in grave danger — but she says she couldn’t have lived with herself if she’d stayed at Morgan Stanley.
“I felt I should be doing what I believe in,” she tearfully told The Post. “[I recall thinking] I needed to be there because otherwise, how am I going to look my [future] kids in the eyes? What am I going to tell them?”
From small town to big city
Honcharuk was born in 2000 a “tiny, tiny town” in the northwest of Ukraine, about 50 miles from the city of Zhytomyr.
“We didn’t grow up having a lot of money,” she recalled. “My aspiration was always to travel the world because my parents… had never been out of the country, so they didn’t see much.”
Buoyed by her desire to experience a bigger life, Honcharuk began learning English at age 13 and later learned about a U.S. Department of State program that allowed foreign students to study in America.
At 15, she moved to Texas for high school.
Honcharuk subsequently studied computer science, data science and statistics at San Francisco’s Minerva University and traveled widely to places including South Korea, India and the UK.
Later, she secured her plum job at Morgan Stanley and moved to Manhattan.
“It felt like it was the center of the world,” Honcharuk enthused, recalling her apartment with “an amazing view.”
Just months later, however, the war in Ukraine broke out, prompting the transplant to feel like she was “living in two worlds at the one time.”
“You’re here, but you’re thinking about everything that’s happening back home,” she explained.
Since Putin’s army ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Honcharuk had been sending some of her salary back to her family in Ukraine to help with the war effort — but it wasn’t enough.
Fuelled by the need to defend her country, Honcharuk took a leave of absence from Morgan Stanley just before Christmas 2022, flew to Ukraine and immediately signed up to the Army.
She became an emergency combat medic despite having zero experience.
“It was the most needed job at that point,” the war recruit stated. “I was afraid of blood, I was afraid of needles, I’ve never done anything medical before, but I was like, ‘That’s what I need to do.'”
A return to Ukraine
Over the next week, Honcharuk underwent a crash course in first aid, learning how to apply tourniquets, administer IV drips and treat HAT wounds. Then, she was on her way into the war zone.
As an emergency combat medic, she was stationed about just 800 meters from the frontline.
When soldiers were shot or struck by artillery, she and a driver in a makeshift ambulance would race to retrieve them before transporting them back to small underground field hospitals set up in safe zones.
Describing it as “surreal” to see her fellow citizens suffering shrapnel and gunshot wounds, she says she was struck by the selflessness of those she treated in the back of the ambulance.
“You think ‘This is the worst situation you could have in your life: you’re in a war zone, you’re injured, you’re being evacuated,'” Honcharuk explained. “And yet, they’re still so full of kindness, so full of mission, so full of understanding… and they’re cracking jokes being like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to have cool prosthetics now.'”
She recalled tending to one soldier who had just lost his eye. Despite being in unbearable amounts of pain, he was more concerned about Honcharuk’s own safety and comfort.
“Each evacuation was such an inspiration to me because I realized all of these people were brave enough to stand up against evil and go into the worst possible situations to protect what matters to them,” she declared.
In 2023, drone warfare between Russia and Ukraine ramped up, causing a drastic change in tactics and increasing the risk that Honcharuk could be killed or seriously injured.
As a precaution, all emergency combat medics must now be stationed more than 12 miles back from the frontlines, given that Russia has been dropping drones equipped with warheads into Ukrainian territory.
This often makes response times much longer, increasing the pressure on Honcharuk and her team.
Putin’s army has also been using glide bombs — weapons that Honcharuk describes as “highly destructive,” capable of destroying entire buildings.
Depleted — but determined
Honcharuk says Ukrainians are fatigued by almost four years of conflict, and she’s witnessed an untold number of deaths.
“I lost all of my friends I started the war with,” she stated, saying she has personally cremated three of their bodies. “Maybe I could have helped [them] if I were closer [to the frontlines].”
But Honcharuk says the stakes of the war are too high to ever concede, believing a Russian victory would have disastrous consequences for the West and drastically upend the current world order.
“The aggressor wants more and it will go for more,” she asserted. “The bigger war will come if we don’t stop Russia.”
An uncertain future
Since becoming an emergency combat medic, Honcharuk has returned to New York once, taking a trip back to her Morgan Stanley office, where her old desk remains empty. Her bosses would warmly welcome her back and have even discussed what team she would work on next.
But Honcharuk hasn’t yet considered rejoining.
“It was a very different life for me,” she recalled of her halcyon days in the Big Apple, filled with fancy food and fabulous financier friends. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen [in the future]. I try not to think.“
While Honcharuk also tries not to think about what would happen should she become another of the estimated140,000 Ukrainians who have been killed since the outbreak of the war, she says she would accept her fate.
“Whatever I’ve done in life already, I think mattered enough. I can say that I lived a good life and that I’ve given back,” she poignantly said. “If I die tomorrow, there’s not much to regret. I think I’ve done more than the average person can say they did.”
English (US)