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 crimson 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, informed Al Jazeera.
She and her colleagues have been shocked and indignant – however not shocked. They’ve been listening to repeatedly about Russian drones concentrating on ambulances, rescue staff and the folks they have been rescuing, principally the aged who refused to depart their properties, 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 companion, informed 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 annually because the full-scale invasion started in 2022, the World Well being Group (WHO) stated in April.
“Ambulance staff and different personnel servicing well being transport face a threat of harm and loss of life thrice greater than that of different healthcare service staff,” it stated.
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 stated, and 46 % are involved about their psychological well being.
The WHO didn’t specify the variety of casualties amongst ambulance staff, however stated that since 2022 it has verified 1,682 assaults on healthcare amenities and staff in Ukraine which have resulted in 128 deaths and 288 accidents of well being professionals and their sufferers.
Kids within the line of fireplace
In an earlier evaluation final August, it stated the variety of assaults was “the best quantity WHO has ever recorded in any humanitarian emergency globally”.
“These assaults are a deliberate crime towards humanity aimed toward destroying civilians and those that stand on the entrance line combating for [their] lives,” Ukraine’s Well being Ministry stated in July 2024.
The assertion adopted final 12 months’s July 8 strike that killed two hospital staff, wounded eight kids and injured a whole lot 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 accountability for deliberate assaults on healthcare, claiming it solely strikes navy websites and personnel.
Worldwide aid teams say they’re conscious of the gravity of the scenario and are able to hold supporting Ukraine’s healthcare.
“Sadly, these kind of scenario usually are not new,” Giorgio Trombatore, regional director for Jap Europe with Venture Hope, a global humanitarian group, informed 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 latest months, however the groups weren’t damage.
“That’s one thing you can not escape; ultimately you might want to be ready,” Trombatore stated. “Fortunately, we didn’t report casualties from our staff.”
His group additionally supplies helmets and flak jackets, and a few of 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 staff, supported by Venture HOPE, arrived, a second drone exploded 2 metres (7ft) away from the car.
“What saved them is that the car was bulletproof,” Venture HOPE’s spokesman Artem Murach informed Al Jazeera.
‘Hope and religion’
Town of Kupiansk straddles each banks of the sluggish and strategically-located Oskil river, and as soon as boasted a dozen factories, a number of faculties 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 turned 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 a whole lot and broken nearly 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 don’t have any family to host them, they are saying, ‘I’d higher die right here, as a result of it’s house,’” paramedic Raievskyi stated.
He’s no stranger to Russian pummelling – he lives along with his spouse in Saltivka, probably 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 virtually fixed shelling and omnipresent drones.
However irrespective of how extreme their wounds are, he and his colleagues can’t deal with their sufferers on the spot, particularly if they’ve been damage by a drone, as a result of one other strike is at all times a risk.
One life-saving answer – a transportable digital jamming system that scrambles the drones’ navigation programs – 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 companion Dovzhenko stated.
