Ambulance crews ferrying injured Ukrainian troops from the front are witnessing the suffering of a vastly outgunned army, Donbas, Ukraine

Saturday July 09 2022, 6.00pm BST, The Sunday Times

In the back of the ambulance, the unconscious soldier’s chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths, pumped by the ventilator that was keeping him alive. He appeared to be in his early thirties, with cropped dark hair and stubble, dirt under his fingernails and major wounds to his chest and abdomen.

The crew didn’t know exactly what had happened to him: only that he had already had emergency surgery by the time they collected him from an urgent care unit near the front line.

Now two young doctors were watching over him as they hurtled at 90 mph down the pock-marked road away from the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and towards a distant military hospital.