The Sun gained exclusive access to the hero medics risking their lives to save wounded warriors from the carnage in the eastern Donbas region.
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In less than 24 hours we saw horrific amputations, brain injuries and blast wounds to soldiers’ guts, hearts and lungs.
Ukraine keeps its battlefield losses a closely guarded secret.
But the view from a single ambulance station showed the awful price the country is paying in terms of limbs lost and lives forever altered.
On five missions we saw two soldiers who had lost legs, one with a traumatic brain injury from shrapnel that punched through his forehead and two men with abdominal wounds.
One man had already had his spleen removed in emergency surgery in a field hospital and had suffered wounds to his liver, lungs and intestines.
Another had shrapnel lodged around his heart.
Station boss Artem Bildiy said it was a quiet night. The previous night all ten crews were called out.
His employer, humanitarian organisation MOAS, runs a fleet of 50 ambulances across Ukraine’s front lines.
The vehicles range from regular ambulances to Toyota Land Cruiser 4x4s and modified Nissan pick-up trucks for bad terrain.
Artem has ten at the charity’s busiest base in Donbas.
The Sun agreed not to reveal its location over well-founded fears of a Russian strike.
The paint-peeling block’s windows are boarded up to protect the 30- strong team from blasts, and its long, dingy corridors are lined with water bottles due to constant shortages.
The team was ordered to sleep in the basement after Kyiv’s intelligence service warned that their base was on a Russian missile hit list.
Artem said: “They told us the Russians had the co-ordinates of our building. They said there was a Russian collaborator living opposite, recording all the cars coming and going, so we slept in the basement for 48 hours.”
‘The Russians had our building’s co-ordinates’
The hero medics face the risks because they want to be part of the war effort.
Artem, who spent 15 years as a paramedic, said: “I joined MOAS because I wanted to be closer to the front. I wanted to be more useful.”
Every crew has a driver, a paramedic and a fully qualified anaesthetist doctor.
Artem said: “We are the only group that can move intubated (with a tube inserted into the mouth and throat to aid breathing) unconscious patients because we always have an anaesthesiologist on board.
“These are the red patients, people who aren’t breathing, unconscious, or with open head traumas, amputations or multiple injuries.
“The ones whose lives are most in danger are first in line to be helped.”
The moment a soldier is wounded they are treated by the closest comrade who can reach them.
Better trained combat medics take over as soon as they can and the casualty is moved to a field hospital as soon as it is safe enough to do so, where surgeons can operate if necessary.
Two of the patients The Sun accompanied had been stuck for hours because the only roads to their position were under constant Russian artillery fire.
As soon as patients are stable, MOAS is called to transfer them to bigger and better hospitals further from the front line, and Artem said: “The speed of transportation increases the chance of survival.”
It is one reason why Ukraine’s soldiers have higher survival rates than their Russian counterparts.
Western officials say 90 per cent of wounded Ukrainian fighters are likely to survive because of the skill and speed of their medics, compared to just 75 per cent of wounded Russians.
One of the patients The Sun accompanied had been clinically dead for two minutes when his heart stopped on an operating table.
Dr Oksana Troyan said the soldier had suffered a massive bleed after shrapnel severed an artery in his thigh, and without immediate expert care he would have bled to death on the battlefield.
But his comrades staunched the bleed with a tourniquet and dragged him to a field hospital, where surgeons were trying to save his leg when his heart suddenly stopped.
They managed to revive him with emergency CPR, but were forced to amputate the leg.
When it rains, the drones can’t fly and the mud makes it harder for tanks. So if it is bad weather, there are fewer wounded. But now it is very sunny and we are really busy.
The severed limb was then wrapped in plastic and put on the stretcher with him.
Oksana, 33, said she coped with seeing so much carnage by focusing on the soldiers’ recoveries.
The mum-of-one told The Sun: “When I see a missing leg, I know they can be OK.
“I know they will be able to walk or run and swim and drive.
“Two of the very first soldiers I treated sent me photos of their recovery recently.
“They showed me they can sit, they can stand. One even took two steps. I really love those photos.
“But head injuries are the worst because you cannot be so sure what will happen. The outcomes are often not good.”
Amputations in Ukraine have reached World War One levels, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It found up to 50,000 Ukrainians have had to have one or more limbs removed since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion last year — compared to 41,000 Brits and 67,000 Germans during the Great War.
Two of the patients The Sun accompanied had suffered head injuries.
One had a piece of shrapnel that had entered his forehead and lodged in the back of his brain.
The Kyiv intelligence service told us the Russians had the co-ordinates of our building and there might be a missile attack so we slept in the basement for 48 hours.
A third, in Dr Oksana’s ambulance, had been sedated after his surgery.
She feared he may also have suffered brain damage but they would only know for certain when he regained consciousness after more surgery.
MOAS’s founder Christopher Catrambone, a US insurance tycoon, launched the Ukraine operation weeks before Putin invaded last year.
Since then he claims they have helped to save more than 20,000 lives.
His ambulance stations now act as a barometer of the war’s intensity.
They only rest during lulls in the fighting — and those are few and far between.
One of the doctors revealed she has learned to love rain, as it usually means fewer casualties.
She said: “When it’s raining drones can’t fly and the drones are the eyes of the artillery.
“When it is raining, it is muddy, and it is harder for armoured vehicles and tanks to move.
“So if it is bad weather there are fewer wounded.
“But now the weather is sunny and we are really busy.”
Ukraine launched a major counter-offensive in June to try to push back Putin’s invaders.
“We are as busy as we have ever been,” she said.
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