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Ukraine: Inside a frontline hospital near Bakhmut [1]

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Date: 2023-07

The hospital gurney on which Valeriy is carried into the operating room is shaped like a cross. Cloth ties each arm loosely to the perpendicular extensions. The 52-year-old has been shot in the abdomen. Now it’s time to clean his wound.

“He is lucky in a way, the bullet missed his vital organs,” explains Dr Khassan El-Kafarna, a 27-year-old surgeon at the hospital in Kostiantynivka. “The problem is the wound was not clean when he arrived; he spent three days in Bakhmut managing it on his own.”

Across the roughly 600-mile frontline there are pockets of civilians living through the deadliest fighting in Europe since the Second World War.

Despite the often noble efforts of volunteer groups and the Ukrainian government to evacuate those caught in the crossfire, it is not uncommon for civilians to stay put even as the frontline overtakes their homes. Ukraine’s Donbas section of the front has consistently seen some of the heaviest fighting of the full-scale war, and it follows eight years of regional fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. Civilians unable or unwilling to leave the area are often injured or killed.

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In the midst of this is Kostiantynivka, a small industrial town ten kilometres from the frontline and 25 kilometres from the Russian-held city of Bakhmut, which has long been the focal point of the war. The town has become the primary stabilisation point for civilians injured along the front from Bakhmut to Niu-York, an old Ukrainian town somewhat puzzlingly named after the Big Apple and roughly 30 kilometres from Donetsk.

Situated between the strategic city of Kramatorsk and the front, Kostiantynivka is frequently hit by rocket, missile and artillery fire. Despite these dangers and the ever-present threat of the front moving closer, the staff at the hospital continue to provide life-saving care.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-hospital-frontline-bakhmut-russia-war/

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