They are more or less large, of various sizes or colors, sometimes still adorned with shreds of skin or fabric: the shards of ammunition removed from the wounded at the military hospital in Zaporijjia (south) coldly illustrate the abomination of war in Ukraine.
In this closely guarded establishment plunged into darkness, tarpaulins cover the windows, both to prevent the light projected at night from attracting Russian shells and to protect patients if windows were to explode.
Almost darkness therefore reigns in the middle of the morning when surgeons, at the request of AFP, take their disastrous loot out of the operating rooms: two jars of jam, one of which is a third full, in which these bits of death torn off are stored. bodies of soldiers and civilians.
Projected in the weak light of a desk lamp, the shards of ammunition give the shivers. Some appear bottle green, others greyish or maroonish. There, it is “a piece of mine”, explains doctor Yuri, pointing to a machined shape four to five centimeters long.
A more silvery end, made of aluminum, belonged according to him to a sub-munition.
Each piece of metal has a story, that of a threatened life. With a sharp, rather tapered brilliance, the young doctor recalls: “We extracted him from one leg. The soldier was in stable condition and the operation was a success”.
– No deaths –
And to show on his phone an X-ray taken from the wound before the passage to the block. The piece of metal appears there whiter than the muscle in which it was stuck.
Another medical snapshot, drawn from the department’s computer memory, shows a bullet embedded in a jawbone.
The foreign body appears this time in black, and contrasts sharply on X-rays with the rest of the patient’s face, which is lighter.
On a third X-ray, a splinter, again clear, is embedded in the pelvis of an injured person.
“Our men are very strong. The vast majority of those treated here, even those who are seriously injured, want to return to the front with their friends, to support them,” said Dr. Yuri.
No injuries died in the service, assures Dr. Farad Gokharovitch Ali-Shakh, an orthopedic surgeon who insists that all patients since the start of the war have avoided amputation, with two exceptions.
“Their injuries were life-threatening,” he sighs.
– ‘Animals’ –
He too takes out his phone to show AFP the bloody photo of a torn leg holding on only by a flap of skin.
“We were able to restore the vessels and then fix the extremities”, is satisfied Dr. Ali-Shakh, who says he works “20 hours a day” in the operating room.
“We practically all live here,” he notes without making much of it. “Sometimes I can go home for 2-3 hours and then I come back.”
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the military hospital in Zaporizhia has treated “more than 1,000 wounded soldiers and civilians”, says its director, Commander Viktor Pyssanko.
Until then, the war raging since 2014 between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, eastern territory, continued “at low intensity” and was characterized by relatively simple injuries, caused by bullets or explosions.
“But now 80% of the wounded have a combination of war trauma,” he notes, angry at the Russian soldiers. “Animals”, according to him.