Artillery strikes and aerial bombardments. Drone attacks and grenade blasts. Land mines, mortars and bullets. Such are the front-line perils for soldiers in Ukraine.
In war, the dead are buried. Lost limbs are fitted with prosthetics. Less visible are the thousands of combat-related brain injuries that represent one more grim toll in Ukraine’s war of attrition.
For many, the journey that begins in a battlefield medical unit leads to Mechnikov Hospital in the eastern city of Dnipro. Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, the hospital has admitted more than 26,000 combat casualties. Ninety percent arrive with blast-related concussions or severe brain injuries.
The influx has made Mechnikov among the busiest combat trauma centers in the world, a place where hallways and operating rooms have been converted into critical care wards to hold the 50 or so new casualties that arrive every day.
