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|March 2, 2022 – Tata Marharian, a member of the Ukrainian Volunteer Medical Battalion, tells CNN what she’s been seeing from the frontlines of the Russian invasion into Ukraine.
March 10, 2022 – The staff have no training in treating shrapnel or gunshot wounds but they are part of the war effort helping their injured soldiers. They describe the situation as World War III. Sky News Special Correspondent Alex Crawford visits a hospital near Kyiv that’s treating troops injured just a short distance away on the frontline. Warning: This report contains images of injured Ukrainian soldiers.
April 7, 2022 – While many people in Minnesota are watching the situation unfold in Ukraine and wondering how to help, a man from St. Cloud actually has the training and expertise to do so. Next week, he’s going to follow his calling and help save lives.
Another Day in Harm’s Way
April 26, 2022 – In the Russian war in Ukraine, ordinary citizens, most of them women and children and old people, are being killed and wounded by the thousands, many thousands, as the war drags on. Their homes in Soviet era apartment buildings are being systematically destroyed and turned into rubble by Russian artillery, missiles, and bombs. The Russians are trying to kill and hurt as many ordinary civilians as possible to make the people of Ukraine afraid and want to surrender. The Russians often shell and bomb apartment buildings, then wait 30 minutes, and run the same fire mission all over again.
They are trying to kill and wound as many first responders as possible, the firefighters, paramedics, search and rescue dog teams, surviving family members, neighbors. Young 20 something paramedics, like Alexandra Rudkovskaya and Vladimir Venzel, are two of these first responders. They are very well aware of the extreme danger of their work. There is far more to them than what appears on the surface. They are special. They have a serious case of courage . . . bravery that has overcome fear. You see it over and over again these days . . . in Ukraine. This is some of their story.
May 4, 2022 – Just beyond Ukraine’s frontlines, there is another fight to keep those injured on the battlefield alive. Resources are low, but the volunteers who run a vast network of emergency medical services remain committed to their lifesaving work. Elsewhere, care for ailments and illness is hard to come by for ordinary Ukrainians Willem Marx and videographer Edward Kiernan report.
“The essence of war never changes. It’s about the impact of hot metal on the human body, and the skills of those who tend to the injured. Removing shrapnel is a delicate task. It takes skill, and it always hurts.” — Svitlana Kamisarova, Albina Zubko, and many others, reported by Lindsey Hilsum, always out in front warrior reporter, Channel 4 News
May 6, 2022 – Warning: This report contains images of doctors treating injuries right from the start. While Western governments help Ukraine resist Russian forces by pouring in weapons, the reality on the frontline is brutal. Russia is pummelling Ukrainian soldiers in the east with heavy artillery. The Ukrainian government hasn’t released complete numbers of dead or injured soldiers. We visited doctors and nurses at a field hospital just back from the frontline.
May 11, 2022 – Warning: This report contains distressing images. While Europe rushes to shore up its defenses and maintain a united front against Russia, in Ukraine the long weeks of war show no sign of coming to an end. In the towns and villages around the capital Kyiv, where Russian troops committed some of the worst atrocities in this war, bodies are still being found. As Ukrainians come to identify their loved ones, the government is also collecting the remains of Russian soldiers killed in the fighting. But – unclaimed by the Russians – these bodies are now piling up in refrigerated containers in Kyiv.
June 6, 2022 – Workers at Kyiv’s central morgue examine 160 body bags containing the remains of Ukrainian soldiers, handed over by Russian forces as part of the agreement that ended the bloody two-month Russian siege of the port city of Mariupol. CNN’s Ben Wedeman has the exclusive report.
June 8, 2022 – Sky News visits a military hospital in a secret eastern Ukrainian location, where patients with horrific burns and shrapnel wounds fear they could be a target for Russian air strikes.
June 13, 2022 – Helmet-camera footage reveals how Ukrainian combat medics risk their lives to treat the wounded and evacuate casualties from the battlefield.
July 7, 2022 – ABC News’ James Longman takes an inside look at a group of American veterans, made up of former U.S. special operations forces and medics, working with Ukrainians and preparing for a secret mission.
August 7, 2022 – As the war in Ukraine rages on, the commander of the Hospitallers Medical Battalion runs combat first aid courses and trains Ukrainian men and women in the use of firearms before they head out to the front lines.
This is a film about an unstoppable woman and her team of medics as they work tirelessly to protect the injured from the horrors of the war.
September 13, 2022 – Half a thousand Ukrainian soldiers are wounded on the frontline every day. These figures were announced by President Zelenskyi back in June. Meanwhile, those who save the lives of soldiers – paramedics – are also dying. They are priority targets for enemy snipers, because minus one military medic at the front means at least ten lost fighters. This is what they are taught at emergency medical trainings. How paramedics from Kharkiv and Donetsk region evacuate the wounded and in what conditions they work – in the video from hromadske.
The life of a combat medic on the front line of the war with Russia. “We have hard battles. Lots of wounded soldiers, like every day.” — Yaryna Chornoguz
September 21, 2022 – Yaryna Chornoguz, a senior corporal in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, talks with Alex Wagner about the important help U.S. weapons have been to Ukrainian forces driving out invading Russians, and the trauma she has witnessed as a combat medic encountering injured civilians.
October 18, 2022 – Sky’s John Sparks reports from eastern Ukraine where ambulance crews are having to deal with injured civilians while being under attack from Russian forces.
November 6, 2022 – “The sound of explosions is very scary. “For me, the sound that will be associated with the war is the moaning, crying, and screaming of our soldiers,” says hospitalist Iryna Tsybukh. Until February 24, she lived a completely different, civilian life. She wrote her master’s degree, was a media trainer, volunteer, and producer, and shot a film about children from Ukrainian villages that are situated deep in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
They never had time to present it in Kyiv; the screening was supposed to take place on February 25. See the story of how Iryna became a hospitalist in our special project, Women’s Power. The stories were created in cooperation with the UN Women Ukraine project “Decentralization Reforms and Community Security: Transformative Approaches to Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Ukraine,” funded by the Government of Denmark. The partner project is implemented on the basis of advertising rights.
November 16, 2022 – Alina has been a combat medic with the Ukrainian Army since 2016. Just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, she realized that she was pregnant with her fifth child. She decided to continue working, treating injured Ukrainian soldiers until she was seven months pregnant.
Ukraine’s Secret Weapon • Combat Medics in the Line of Fire
“We’re fighting for our land, for our children.” — Valeria, Victor, Ruslan, Olga
November 17, 2022 – In the east of Ukraine under daily Russian shelling, a dedicated team of medics – many who volunteered at the start of the war – are saving lives. The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville embedded with doctors and nurses for almost a week. “I have the most amazing job in the world. I defend heroes,” said Valeria, 21, an anaesthetist’s assistant. Without a word to her family, she volunteered for military service, and has been saving lives in some of the most dangerous fronts since.
November 24, 2022 – Since Russia retreated from the Kherson nearly two weeks ago, cutting water and power lines in its wake, doctors say caring for patients is becoming harder, especially as attacks increase.
November 25, 2022 – Near the front line, Ukrainian doctors fight in a daily battle between life and death. RFE/RL spent a day at a field hospital near Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, which Russian forces are attempting to capture.
November 28, 2022 – Ukrainian volunteers discovered about 20 bodies of dead Russian soldiers near the village of Dovhenke in the Kharkiv region. After a forensic medical examination, the remains of some Russian soldiers may be offered in exchange for the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.
December 12, 2022 – No two days are the same at a military hospital in the Donetsk region that treats soldiers wounded in some of the fiercest battles in nearly 10 months of war with Russian forces.
December 13, 2022 – A Ukrainian military medic who was pregnant when she was captured by Russian troops in Mariupol has spoken of her nearly six-month ordeal in captivity. Maryana Mamonova says she received little medical care and that her unborn baby only survived because other prisoners shared food with her.
December 17, 2022 – Kroha is a 46-year-old paramedic who has been working on the frontline in Donbas, one of the most fiercely fought over parts of Ukraine since Russia’s attempts to invade the country. Bel Trew follows Kroha for the day, witnessing the devastation that Kroha and other medics face as the war grinds on and more bodies are sucked into destruction and devastation wrought as Ukraine attempts to wrestle back control of its territory as Russia bombards towns and cities across the country.
December 23, 2022 – U.S. national Jennifer Mullee worked as an emergency nurse in a hospital in Los Angeles until May, when she arrived in the eastern Ukrainian region following an appeal from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to work as a volunteer nurse.
December 29, 2022 – Hot battles in Bakhmut are expressed not only in shelling and explosions, but also in what happens behind the scenes of the routine everyday life of the heroes of this war, the hard work of medics. They save lives under constant threat to their lives. Their mission is to save the lives of the wounded in time, often to deliver them to medical facilities. Just in time and right, because time is important here. This video, shot on an action camera, shows the usual, not the worst, everyday medical units on the front lines.
January 4, 2023 – On the front lines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian volunteers has been on a mission to search for the bodies of fallen soldiers and return them to families. The group Black Tulip Mission carries out the dangerous task of locating and exhuming the bodies amid explosions and total ruin.
January 25, 2023 – When a Russian air strike destroyed an apartment block in Dnipro on January 14, pediatric anesthesiologist Nadia Yaroshenko was momentarily faced with an agonizing choice: try to save her trapped 12-year-old son or stay with a child on the operating table.
January 26, 2023 – As a medic in Ukraine, Canadian Brandon Mitchell has had many close calls, including being injured in a mine explosion and almost being hit by a Russian artillery strike. But after more than 10 months on Ukraine’s frontline, Mitchell says death is not his greatest fear.
January 30, 2023 – The funeral of Ukrainian body collector Denys Sosnenko has been held in northern Donbas, in Ukraine. The 21-year-old former Ukrainian national kickboxing champion volunteered last year to work as a body collector, bringing back bodies of abandoned corpses of soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian. Denys Sosnenko was killed by an anti-tank mine while helping to recover the remains of soldiers. “Because of your work so many soldiers, who died in places no one would ever have looked, have been reunited with their families,” said Alexey Yukov, the local head of Black Tulip, a charitable organization where Denys Sosnenko volunteered.
February 8, 2023 – An RFE/RL reporter was interviewing a Ukrainian soldier in Bakhmut when a Russian bomb hit a neighboring house. His dramatic footage captures what happened next: frantic battlefield first aid to save a man’s life.
February 13, 2023 – Every single day, brave Ukrainian combat medics risk their lives to save others. Even though they are protected by the Geneva Conventions, Russians specifically seek them out and target them. Many have lost their lives as a result of this brutal onslaught. But combat medics don’t give up, and keep treating injured soldiers daily––despite the constant danger.
February 16, 2023 – Volunteer medics working in Bakhmut in Ukraine are no strangers to the extreme violence ravaging the city. A video obtained by CNN shows how medical aid workers are being targeted by Russian missiles. CNN’s Matthew Chance reports.
February 24, 2023 – When every minute can mean life or death, frontline combat medics like Yara Chornohuz are a lifeline. Scripps News’ Jason Bellini and his crew traveled to the Donbas region to find out more about her and her unit’s rescue efforts, and the remarkable point-of-view footage she captures.
March 4, 2023 – In a field hospital treating wounded Ukrainian soldiers from the battle in Bakhmut, battered, exhausted personnel are brought in on stretchers, laid out on gurneys as the medical team triages their injuries and sends them off for further treatment or back to the front to continue fighting. Chief of the medical service, Anatoliy, says his team treats dozens of soldiers every day and barely has time to eat. “My medics work practically non-stop,” he said. “Before the full-scale invasion we had 50-60 wounded in a nine-month rotation, and now sometimes we have more (than this) in one day,” he added.
The fiercely contested city of Bakhmut has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as defenders hold out against Russia’s relentless shelling and heavy artillery aimed at securing Moscow’s stated aim of taking the whole of Donbas. “First I got shell-shocked then I got shot here,” said one soldier, pointing out his leg to a paramedic as an Associated Press team visited the field hospital on Sunday. “They pulled the bullet out. I came back and got shot in the head,” he added. The work they do so near the front is not without risk.
March 7, 2023 – A unit of Ukrainian medics treats up to 10 wounded soldiers a day in their small, improvised emergency center in the Donetsk region. Exhausted team members say they feel haunted by the lives they cannot save.
March 27, 2023 – Standing on the roadside at sunset, a team of medics have snapped on their latex gloves, waiting for the arrival of wounded Ukrainian soldiers. ‘Ulf’, a paramedical unit from the Da Vinci battalion, is based in a frontline village, where their job is to collect injured troops battling for Bakhmut, the centre of the war’s bloodiest fighting, who have been evacuated by military paramedics.
April 3, 2023 – Brutal fighting rages on the streets of Bakhmut as Russian forces continue their assault on the embattled city. At a “stabilization point,” Ukrainian medics fight to save the lives of soldiers injured during fighting. They say they treat up to a hundred patients a day, including wounded civilians.
April 3, 2023 – This is Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC). This is the skills and knowledge to save you and your friends lives. It’s not just Bakhmut that the war is raging. To the south the Russians are slowly advancing. These men are learning the skills to keep their friends alive. All training and especially this training is of the utmost importance. Thanks to all who have ever donated medical supplies, and donated what I have actually asked for , thank you! We are able to better equip them. Thanks especially to blågulabilen and Tilde, with their help we were able to equip and clothe almost 100 soldiers before their first time at the front.
April 14, 2023 – The hottest spot on the front line has long been Bakhmut: a small city in the Donetsk region. ‘Wagner’ mercenaries and Russian VDV forces are currently storming the city with up to 100 daily attacks on the Ukrainian defenders, who hold the positions in the city. Combat medics operate non-stop 24/7 to save the lives of Ukrainian servicemen and transport them into hospitals away from hostilities. Watch their story now.
May 7, 2023 – «When the Russians are actively shelling our positions, about 200 wounded a day can pass through us», says paramedic Katia. The girl has been volunteering for the Hospitallers medical battalion for more than six months, and in civilian life she works as an IT specialist. She spends about three weeks a month at war, providing care wounded soldiers whom her crew transports from one stabilization point to another. The Hospitallers is a volunteer organization of paramedics that was founded at the beginning of the combats in 2014. How one of the Hospitallers’ crews works – see in hromadske report.
June 18, 2023 – “There was a hit on their location, and now all of them have a concussion,” shares a dog trainer Vadym over very loud barking in the background. He is talking about the service dogs which have been hospitalized for three months now in the first — and currently the only — military veterinary hospital in Ukraine. This hospital was created on the second day of the full-scale invasion on the base of the Khmelnytskyi Veterinary Hospital. Now both service animals and civilians are treated here. Some of them remain here even after treatment, because there is nowhere for them to go.
Among them is an Alabai from Irpin, who was returned to the hospital because the dog bit her new owners. “She doesn’t touch us, because she’s used to us, she knows everyone, including the nurses,” says the head doctor of the hospital, Kyrylo Chumakov. A fox settled here in the enclosure — she was found by local children after de-occupation, with 80% burns of its body. Despite the fact that the hospital is far from the front line, it too suffered from rocket fire. Lamps in the operating room fell on the head of the chief doctor just during the operation. On the work of the First Military Hospital of Veterinary Medicine — watch Mariana Pietsukh’s report.