To save lives, Ukrainian combat medics must stay alive.
So, deep inside a position that soldiers call “the black forest” in eastern Ukraine, the medical corps of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade tries to remain hidden. The zero line — where Russian and Ukrainian forces are squared off in trench lines within sight of each other — is only a mile or two away.
The iconic red cross painted on the side of the team’s armored vehicle offers little protection from enemy fire. In fact, soldiers say, it makes them a target. They carefully camouflage the vehicle until it is needed — which is often these days as Russian forces mount wave after wave of assaults.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
So, deep inside a position that soldiers call “the black forest” in eastern Ukraine, the medical corps of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade tries to remain hidden.
The iconic red cross painted on the side of the team’s armored vehicle offers little protection from enemy fire.
It is often the first stop before they are dispatched to stabilization points farther from the fighting and then to advanced medical centers where more complicated procedures, like amputations, are performed.
The stabilization medics are operating in what the American military refers to as the “golden hour” — the period of time when a life is saved or lost.
The treatment of wounded soldiers is also complicated by structural problems that are a legacy of the Soviet system: mismanagement, a dearth of trained instructors, tensions between medics on the ground and the command in the General Staff, and the reliance on volunteers to buy most supplies.
In November, President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the commander of the Medical Forces, Tetyana Ostashchenko, replacing her with Anatoliy Kazmirchuk, the head of a military hospital in Kyiv.
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