Doctor: Wounded soldiers die from lack of care - worst for the Russians
Ukrainian soldiers move the body of a killed soldier from the roadside near Bachmut. Photo: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are said to have died since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Exactly how many are involved is almost impossible to say. Ukraine claims to have killed around 117,000 Russian soldiers, while Russia has admitted only a fraction. In November, the chairman of the US Professional Military Council – part of the US Department of Defense – estimated around 100,000 dead and wounded on each side, in addition to the many thousands of civilian casualties of the war.
The Russian independent site The Insider has published testimonies from Ukrainian and Russian medics working to evacuate wounded soldiers from the front. Several of them testify to terrible scenes, and not least on the Russian side, insufficient medical equipment and poorly trained personnel.
A Russian intensive care doctor, who did not want to be named, has not worked on the front himself and says that doctors who do are strictly forbidden from talking to journalists.
A doctor operates on a Ukrainian wounded soldier near the front in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine. Photo: Ihor Tkachov/AFP
Several of those he has spoken to are critical of the quality of the medical equipment. It is outdated, and many of the staff lack proper training, according to his information. The biggest shortage is of blood-stopping materials, and pressure bandages that are made in Russia or China are also of poor quality, he states.
He believes that as many as 30 percent of his own deaths could have been avoided with the right equipment and knowledge. Among the Ukrainians, who are supposed to be significantly better equipped, the corresponding percentage is only five percent, according to his data. He says that many Russian doctors are happy when they manage to come across equipment from fallen Ukrainian soldiers. He also notes that the best equipment that Russian doctors have is what they took from Ukraine.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lidén, teacher of military science at the Norwegian Defense Academy, says that a well-functioning logistics chain is a prerequisite for being able to take care of their wounded soldiers.
- Many wounded Russian soldiers now die during transport from the front. A large part of these could have survived if they had received care quickly. After all, the Russians have had difficulty with logistics for a long time, also in terms of fuel and ammunition, and in Russia, as in Ukraine, the healthcare service is included in the logistics. The Russians generally have longer transport distances both to the first instance of care and to more qualified care and they are now suffering much greater losses in the war. Therefore, the Russian soldiers suffer much more from inadequate combat medical care than the Ukrainians do.
Russian soldiers evacuated from the front are taken, among other things, to Rostov or Belgorod in Russia near the Ukrainian border. Particularly badly injured and those who require specialist care are taken to better equipped hospitals in St. Petersburg or Moscow, according to the Russian doctor The Insider spoke to.
Ukraine, for its part, has invested heavily in equipping and synchronizing its healthcare chain over the past eight years, including by coordinating the previously divided healthcare service between the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense and the Security Service. At the same time, Western countries such as the United States and Canada have provided Ukraine with modern field hospitals and medical equipment. On the Russian side, the status was initially much lower, and the problems during the past year have also gotten bigger, says Peter Lidén.
- At the same time, the capacity for care has also become worse as the Russians have become increasingly pressured. Russia generally does not take the same consideration of its personnel either, he says.
The coffin of a soldier who fought for the Ukrainian Azov Battalion is buried in Kyiv. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP
According to combat medic Oleksiy Yudkevich, who gives his testimony in The Insider, many war injuries are relatively easy to treat, for example external bleeding, which could often be stopped with the right equipment and technology. But not infrequently the staff lack knowledge, he says.
According to Yudkevich, a common cause of death is more extensive internal bleeding, which few inexperienced people know how to detect.
At the same time as the war is raging in full force in Ukraine, efforts are being made to prevent and treat mental injuries among the civilian population as best as possible. Communities completely torn apart by shells and ammunition and people who have lost family and close friends. It will likely require enormous resources from Ukrainian society for many years to come.
- Many people who have lived in conflict areas experience psychological stress from having their communities destroyed, says Reza lee Eshaghian, medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.
He believes it will take time for the healthcare system to get back on its feet.
- I feel that we sometimes underestimate the mental injuries, and how much of an impact they have on people. The stories we hear and the challenges these people face are shocking and upsetting, he says
