According to the WHO, strikes on ambulances make up 20% of all attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare system, which suggests these are part of a calculated strategy.
The result of such sustained attacks is that the civilian population close to the frontline are getting increasingly cut off from health services.
The majority of people left in these areas are elderly people who often chronic diseases. Even if they survive air strikes and shelling, without medication and occasional check-ups they face a slow death.
And ambulances may not be able to reach them if the risks are high.
Lytvynenko and her colleagues constantly monitor social media to learn about threats.
“It’s really scary,” she says. “Every time when we take a patient to hospital, we just pray. These drones can appear from anywhere, they can even get through anti-drone nets.”
In some cases, police are dispatched instead of ambulances.
Since the danger zone where FPV drones operate is growing – as both Ukraine and Russia develop drones with greater and greater ranges – mobile clinics run by various health organisations have had to shift their operations further and further away from the frontline.
“Two years ago, we could go up to 5-8km (3.1-5 miles) from the frontline,” says Meldrum. “Now we won’t go anywhere within 30km and this distance keeps growing.”
Over the past 18 months, MSF stopped regular visits to about 80 villages near the front where they had provided health services, says Meldrum. And recently it has paused ambulance services in Sloviansk, a major city in eastern Ukraine.
“It doesn’t feel like we’re protected in this environment, and in the way that Russia is conducting the war,” Meldrum says.
“We don’t feel that the rules of war are being respected.”
