Kharkiv“We are in the middle of the Kharkiv river,” says my companion. Or so the GPS says in this northeastern Ukrainian city, where such systems malfunction and give false positions every time the sirens that precede bombings go off. Although the city has been restored to the lighting system in the streets for two days and is no longer a black mass when the sun goes down, the bombings continue to besiege it during the night. Ukraine‘s is turning into a war of technology: managing to block GPS on phones while maintaining internet signal and phone service is not within everyone’s reach.
The United States is obviously behind this new tool, which I have never seen in my 25 years of covering conflict. As for drones, the first time I remember using them domestically was in the Sirte (Libya) offensive against the Islamic State in 2016 in mapping tasks, and soon after the jihadists themselves used them in the battle of Mosul with an offensive objective.
But in the war in Ukraine, where they have been produced en masse, a drone costing only a few hundred euros can destroy machines worth thousands of euros, in addition to the psychological fear they generate on both sides. I remember a video from a few months ago where a group of Russian infantry was attacked by a Ukrainian drone: the terrified survivors made the big mistake of getting into a small Lada vehicle, instead of fleeing on foot each in one direction, and they try to escape, but a few seconds later, the car explodes on a second impact.
If you’re being chased by a drone, there’s nowhere to hide. They go at amazing speeds and can hunt any ground target. This is the reason why all the hospitals we visit operate only at night. While it is true that there are drones that have thermal cameras, they are still few and far between, compared to those that do not. One way to reduce the danger exponentially is to carry out infantry actions in the open field when there is no longer light, which also translates into the fact that the transfers of the wounded and the evacuations to large cities are done at night.
Time is gold
Not long after the sun goes down, the first wounded appear in a group of several soldiers. One of them, seriously wounded, is immediately taken for care, where medical team personnel (including a combat surgeon, three paramedics and a nurse) free him from the tourniquets and stop the bleeding. The procedure is simple, it involves filling the void left by shrapnel in the space that used to be part of your body with sterilized gases. The doctor introduces these gases to try to stop the bleeding, while another deals with traumatic pneumothorax (condition characterized by the presence of air in the pleural space, which causes the lung to partially or completely collapse causing death) by inserting a pleural tube between the ribs, to remove excess air. The probe enters laterally from the side and disappears inside the soldier’s body. Once all the procedures in the hospital have been completed, they proceed to their rapid evacuation to a hospital in the city of Kharkiv, where there is still a long journey, in which the hopes of living or dying are conditioned according to the time takes time to arrive In reality the probabilities of living or dying are always measured in time. For example, “if you lose a leg or an arm, you must put the limb in cold water within a maximum of one hour to be able to put it back together, once that time has passed nothing can be done”, Maxim tells us , one of the doctors. “Getting to a hospital as soon as possible determines everything, but depending on the injuries, you need to evacuate to a hospital where the equipment is different; and time, once again, marks everything”.
Hospitals, priority targets
It used to be artillery and snipers, but that was all a matter of luck and experience mixed in, where you could more or less aspire to survive if you bought a lot of numbers in the imaginary lottery of life and death on the frontline (even if it was with permanent injuries), but drones have changed everything, this is the main fear of all those who are exposed on the front lines, especially hospitals that are priority targets for the enemy, because they not only destroy lives and a precious facility, but also destroy hope, because these items are the only bridges that connect you to the possible survival of someone who falls wounded in combat “Please, will you let me see the photos before I publish them?”, is the last thing the head of press at the hospital says to us before saying goodbye. “A few days ago a television came and recorded the entire exterior of the facilities. The same day we saw the images, we had to move the facilities to the place where we are now.”
