Pictures of soldiers returning from the front in eastern Ukraine

After almost two and a half years of war, it is unclear how many Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured, but the few published data suggest the number is in the tens of thousands.

CBC News recently gained access to a medical evacuation bus that was transporting injured soldiers from the front lines to a hospital in the Dnipro region of eastern Ukraine.

Among the 25 patients evacuated by volunteer-operated bus were men who had been drafted under the new mobilisation law and sent to the front with only very basic training, as well as those who had volunteered to fight at the beginning of the war.

Here’s what some of them told us.

Hit by a grenade launcher

Most active Ukrainian soldiers can only be identified by their call sign. This 39-year-old IT specialist is known as “WIFI” and was only at the front for a short time. He was injured after two and a half days at the front. He was stationed at a position near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, an area that Ukrainian authorities say is among the most difficult fighting on the front.

WIFI told CBC News he was in a trench just hours earlier, helping to fortify it, when it came under attack. He said they were fired upon by a Russian automatic grenade launcher.

After the first shot, shrapnel flew into his thigh, he said. “It felt like a syringe,” he said.

The second shot hit him on the other foot.

“It was scorching hot and I immediately felt a stabbing pain and numbness in my foot.”

To stop the bleeding, he put tourniquets on his limbs. But once the tourniquets were tightened, he could not even crawl out of the trench, so he had to be carried out by two comrades.

When CBC News spoke to him, he was lying on a stretcher outside an undisclosed pickup point, writing a message to his mother.

He said he was exempt from military service because he had cancer that was in remission, but when Ukraine new mobilization lawsome medical exemptions were lifted and he was eligible.

He said that at the end of April, military officers showed up at his home in Poltava. After about two months of training, he was sent to the front and could return there after his recovery.

A medical commissioner decides on re-call.

“It was very difficult both mentally and physically,” he said of his time at the front.

Nailed under a tank

Before the 34-year-old soldier with the call sign “Liahk” was mobilized in April and sent to the front a month ago, he worked as an accountant in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

He was in a tank on the front lines in the Donetsk region when it was hit by a Lancet drone at around 7 a.m. local time on June 19. The drone, which self-destructs when it hits targets, was first used by Russia in Syria and has been used repeatedly in Ukraine to attack guns and artillery on the ground.

After the tank was hit, part of the turret collapsed, trapping Liahk and his commander inside. The tank driver managed to get out and tried to pull Liahk out as well, but then he shouted that he had to try to restart the tank because they would probably come under fire a second time.

“It was a miracle that the tank started, so he drove us out,” Liahk told CBC News as he winced in pain and waited to board the evacuation bus.

As they drove out of the combat zone, the commander kept Liahk on tenterhooks before he himself lost consciousness and fell into a coma.

A narrow escape

A soldier with the call sign “Kniaz,” which means prince in Ukrainian, stood out among the soldiers CBC met because he is 60 years old. On June 19, Kniaz drove a military vehicle towards Avdiivka, which seized by Russian forces in February when his vehicle was hit by a projectile dropped from a first-person view (FPV) drone.

Shrapnel pierced his head, shoulder, arms and leg. He says his ability to quickly escape the vehicle saved his life because the vehicle burst into flames shortly afterward.

“The drones are our biggest problem,” he told CBC News. “We don’t have as many as the damn Russians.”

Unlike some of the other evacuees, he volunteered to fight at the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. He had previously fought against Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk in 2017.

“It is the duty of every man to defend his country,” he said.

Relieve fears and treat injuries

Tatiana Romaniuk, 33, is not a soldier, but has a call sign: “Rudy,” which means redhead, a reference to her long, copper-colored hair. She is a combat medic with Hospitallersa group of volunteer medics, spends two weeks a month transporting injured soldiers to the hospital.

The converted bus, which transports soldiers, has six beds and medical equipment. On the day of CBC’s visit, it was sweltering hot inside and a heavy smell of sweat and blood hung in the air. Romaniuk estimated the temperature inside the bus was 40 degrees Celsius.

The most seriously injured were carried to the beds on stretchers and immediately hooked up to medical devices that measured their heart rate and oxygen levels. The rest were crammed into every available seat on board. A lucky few got a seat, while others sat in the aisle.

Medical evacuations can take place at very short notice. When soldiers are injured on the front lines, they receive immediate medical care at military stabilization points and are then taken to a collection point where they are picked up by the Hospitallers and taken to the hospital.

According to Romaniuk, the most difficult part of a medical transport is when a soldier’s condition deteriorates en route, as happened to one patient while CBC was on the bus. Upon arrival at the hospital, the soldier required emergency surgery for shrapnel in his spine.

Romaniuk said the first thing a soldier who was injured after just a week on the front lines wanted to do when he got on the bus was to borrow her cellphone and call his family.

She said that during transport, all soldiers often ask her if her limbs need to be amputated.

“They worry about what it will be like, what they will do next and what their lives will look like,” she said.