Kyiv, Ukraine – As luck would have it, emergency physician Elina Dovzhenko was far sufficient from her car when a Russian drone struck it, breaking the windshield and splattering items of shrapnel round.
It was getting darkish on July 9 within the bombed-out, nearly-abandoned metropolis of Kupiansk which sits lower than 5km (3 miles) from the entrance line within the northeastern Ukrainian area of Kharkiv – and simply 40km (25 miles) west of the Russian border.
However there was positively sufficient gentle left for the Russian drone operator on the entrance line’s reverse aspect to see that Dovzhenko’s car was a white ambulance with pink stripes parked close to a shelling-damaged hospital the place she and her colleagues have been.
“We heard the drone transfer, it swirled and swirled round [the building], then we heard the blast,” Dovzhenko, 29, advised Al Jazeera.
She and her colleagues have been shocked and offended – however not shocked. They’ve been listening to repeatedly about Russian drones concentrating on ambulances, rescue staff and the folks they have been rescuing, largely the aged who refused to depart their houses, pets, kitchen gardens and household graves.
“They chase ambulances each different day. They positively focused us,” Denys Raievskyi, a 30-year-old paramedic and Dovzhenko’s ambulance associate, advised Al Jazeera.
Their job is among the many most harmful professions in wartime Ukraine – some 200 ambulances have been broken or destroyed by Russian shelling assaults every year for the reason that full-scale invasion started in 2022, the World Well being Group (WHO) mentioned in April.
“Ambulance staff and different personnel servicing well being transport face a threat of harm and demise thrice greater than that of different healthcare service staff,” it mentioned.
Premeditated, systematic assaults on ambulances are a part of the Kremlin’s wider technique to destroy Ukraine’s medical facilities and deprive thousands and thousands of entry to healthcare exacerbating their stress in addition to bodily and psychological well being issues.
Some 68 % of Ukrainians already report a decline of their well being in contrast with the pre-war interval, the WHO mentioned, and 46 % are involved about their psychological well being.
The WHO didn’t specify the variety of casualties amongst ambulance staff, however mentioned that since 2022 it has verified 1,682 assaults on healthcare services and staff in Ukraine which have resulted in 128 deaths and 288 accidents of well being professionals and their sufferers.
Youngsters within the line of fireside
In an earlier evaluation final August, it mentioned the variety of assaults was “the very best quantity WHO has ever recorded in any humanitarian emergency globally”.
“These assaults are a deliberate crime towards humanity geared toward destroying civilians and those that stand on the entrance line combating for [their] lives,” Ukraine’s Well being Ministry mentioned in July 2024.
The assertion adopted final yr’s July 8 strike that killed two hospital staff, wounded eight kids and injured tons of in Okhmatdyd, Ukraine’s largest kids’s hospital in Kyiv.
Russia used an X-101 missile that flies low to keep away from detection and air defence, manoeuvres mid-flight and hits its goal with a 10-metre (33ft) accuracy even when launched from 5,500km (3,420 miles) away.
Moscow routinely denies duty for deliberate assaults on healthcare, claiming it solely strikes army websites and personnel.
Worldwide reduction teams say they’re conscious of the gravity of the state of affairs and are able to hold supporting Ukraine’s healthcare.
“Sadly, some of these state of affairs usually are not new,” Giorgio Trombatore, regional director for Jap Europe with Undertaking Hope, a global humanitarian group, advised Al Jazeera. “However we’re resilient, we’re going to proceed.”
The group maintains 13 ambulances in 4 Ukrainian areas, 5 of them in Kharkiv – together with the one struck by the drone in Kupiansk.
Different ambulances have additionally encountered drones in current months, however the groups weren’t harm.
“That’s one thing you can not escape; ultimately it’s essential be ready,” Trombatore mentioned. “Fortunately, we didn’t report casualties from our crew.”
His group additionally gives helmets and flak jackets, and among the ambulances are bulletproof – one thing that helps counter Russia’s tactic of repeated strikes.
In a single case, a Russian drone assault killed a civilian and wounded one other within the village of Stetsivka within the northern area of Sumy on July 14.
After the ambulance crew, supported by Undertaking HOPE, arrived, a second drone exploded 2 metres (7ft) away from the car.
“What saved them is that the car was bulletproof,” Undertaking HOPE’s spokesman Artem Murach advised Al Jazeera.
‘Hope and religion’
Town of Kupiansk straddles each banks of the gradual and strategically-located Oskil river, and as soon as boasted a dozen factories, a number of schools and a inhabitants of twenty-two,000.
However days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, the mayor surrendered the city and it grew to become the de facto administrative centre of the Moscow-occupied chunk of the Kharkiv area.
The Russians have been kicked out six months later throughout a daring Ukrainian counter-offensive.
However the city remained inside attain of Russian artillery, drones and missiles, which have killed dozens of civilians, wounded tons of and broken virtually each constructing.
A lot of the residents – together with law enforcement officials, fireplace brigades and authorities officers – fled Kupiansk in early 2023 when Russian forces started approaching once more.
However about 1,200 folks – or about 7 % of the pre-war inhabitants – remained.
“They’re scared to depart, they haven’t any kin to host them, they are saying, ‘I’d higher die right here, as a result of it’s house,’” paramedic Raievskyi mentioned.
He’s no stranger to Russian pummelling – he lives together with his spouse in Saltivka, essentially the most shelling-damaged area of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis some 120km (75 miles) east of Kupiansk.
Raievskyi’s ambulance travels as much as 1.5 hours to assist the sick and the wounded, regardless of the just about fixed shelling and omnipresent drones.
However regardless of how extreme their wounds are, he and his colleagues can’t deal with their sufferers on the spot, particularly if they’ve been harm by a drone, as a result of one other strike is at all times a chance.
One life-saving resolution – a transportable digital jamming system that scrambles the drones’ navigation techniques – now not works within the Kharkiv area as a result of Russians connect kilometres-long fibre-optic cables to their loitering munitions.
“Sadly, in Kupiansk all of the Russian drones are fibre-optic,” his associate Dovzhenko mentioned.