Ukraine medics treat wounded soldiers near Bakhmut

In a field hospital treating wounded from the bloody battle in Bakhmut, battered, exhausted soldiers are brought in on stretchers, laid out on gurneys as the medical team triages their injuries and sends them off for further treatment or back to the front to continue fighting. Chief of the medical service, Anatoly Chuykin, says his team treats dozens of soldiers every day and barely has time to eat. “Medics work practically non-stop. Before the full-scale invasion, we had 50-60 wounded in a nine-month rotation, and now sometimes we have more (than this) in one day,” he said. The fiercely contested city of Bakhmut has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance as defenders hold out against Russia’s relentless shelling and heavy artillery aimed at securing Moscow’s stated aim of taking the whole of Donbas. The scale of the human cost of the battle is evident from the mud-covered, broken bodies that constantly stream into the field hospital. As more and more stretchers are brought into the makeshift operating theatre, medics swarm the injured, cutting off clothing and assessing the damage. In one instance, they carefully remove a grenade from the pocket of a wounded soldier. The work they do so near the front is not without risk. On Saturday heavy shelling hit the hospital, injuring one of the doctors. Laid out on a gurney, medics crowd around Ukrainian serviceman, Vitaliy who goes by the war name “Alpha”. He groans in pain as medics work to try and treat the large deep wound on his arm. “It was a tank shell,” Alpha says. “They (Russians) tried to break through. But they failed. Despite the pain, he smiles and winks at one of the doctors. Video by Mstyslav Chernov, Associated Press