'Intensive care on wheels' 24 hours with battlefield medics in Ukraine

It is around midnight in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, and the first emergency ambulance of the night is charging at 75mph down a single carriageway road from the frontline. Inside, under the care of two watchful medics, is Ihor, an unconscious soldier wounded from the battle of Chasiv Yar, with shrapnel, perhaps from a mine, in his abdomen.

- Dan Sabbagh 

Their task is battlefield evacuation: Ihor and tonight's most serious casualties are being taken to a hospital in the safe central city of Dnipro. Four ambulances are following on a bumpy high speed run that takes three hours down roads largely deserted because of the 9pm curfew, the full single bed creaking and bouncing as they go.

"This is intensive care on wheels," says Sergei Zakharchenko, one of the anaesthesiologists in the noisy vehicle, describing his night's work in matter of fact terms, inside a relatively spacious Mercedes Sprinter van. "It is a trauma of course, but it's our work. You have to fight the war and you have to help people."