Amid a ‘huge collective trauma,’ a Harvard program aims to train Ukrainian doctors

CAMBRIDGE — Dr. Dariia Simchuk flips through photos and videos on her phone of her hometown, Zhytomyr, about 85 miles west of Kyiv. They are vignettes of a country at war: buildings reduced to gray piles of rubble; windows of a hospital blown out by nearby explosions and patched up with plywood; an operating room with sandbags stacked in it for extra protection in case of an attack. “It is a huge, collective trauma for all Ukrainians,” she said of the ongoing conflict while seated in a cafe amid the Monday morning bustle of Harvard Square.