– Feels like the lungs are exploding

– Take off all your clothes and put them in this bag, instructs a doctor, not far from the fierce trench battles on the front against Russia.

VG is at what is called a “stabilisation point”. Evacuated soldiers are transported here straight from the front line.

They are taken out at night, hidden as much as possible from the Russian drones that monitor everything that happens.

Yevhen (44), who has just been helped in by three soldiers, has been lucky – he was attacked with explosives from a drone, but has come away with a splinter in his thigh.

But it is not only explosives that the soldiers fear will be dropped from the drones.

– The lungs explode

The drones hover over the positions of the Ukrainian soldiers, looking for the trenches where they are hiding, says Yevhen.

Then they drop small gas bombs, which look like aluminum grenades.

– If you don’t have a gas mask, they smoke you out. They gas us out. There are many undetonated gas shells along the front line.

When the soldiers have been forced to leave the hideout, the bombs arrive.

The poisonous gas is why the doctors at the stabilization point have asked him to take off his clothes. They also give him a mask with an oxygen supply.

– It feels like your lungs are exploding, tears start to flow, you start sneezing. You can’t breathe in at all. When you get it on the skin it’s a burning sensation.

Chemical weapons

The stabilization point VG visits is hidden – with good reason. The Russians are interested in hitting places like this.

Throughout the night, a steady stream of bombs and shells is heard. Some of the explosions are not far away.

They started seeing soldiers with injuries from toxic gas about a year ago, says surgeon Svyatoslav (47). He and the other surgeons and doctors believe that this is the case chlorpicrinA poisonous gas used mostly for insecticides. It was also used as in warfare during the First World War..

On Wednesday, the United States accused Russia of having violated the international ban on the use of chemical weapons – precisely by using this type of gas in its warfare in Ukraine.

Russian authorities have previously denied that they have chemical weapons in their arsenal, saying that no international investigations have shown otherwise. VG has contacted the Russian embassy in Oslo, so far without a reply.

Chlorpicrin causes suffocation. Among other things, it was used by German forces against Allied troops during the First World War.

– It started maybe a year ago – it has been like this the whole time we have been working in this area, says Svyatoslav.

The stabilization point VG visits is not far from Chasiv Yar, where some of the hardest fighting on the front is now taking place.

The city is located on a hill and is strategically important. If the Russians gain control there, they will be able to more easily launch an offensive against the rest of the Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region.

Never know what awaits

The surgeons at the stabilization points are the first to treat the horrific injuries from trench warfare, in the acute phase.

They never know what awaits them – it can be anywhere from zero to over 100 patients in one night, and each injury case is unique.

Surgeon Svyatoslav shows VG pictures of a wide range of injuries he has treated in the past month – from blown feet, backs and faces, to burns and splinters that are deep in bodies and muscle tissue.

The images are too graphic to display.

Lost face

In one of the photos, taken a few weeks ago, a man has had all the bones in his face destroyed. He has lost an eye and his nose. It’s hard to tell what’s what and there’s blood everywhere.

This happened only two weeks into his service at the front line, says Svyatoslav.

– It is difficult to imagine. The patient lies here, and the blood flows from his face drop by drop. He can’t breathe because everything is full of blood, and he can’t see because his face is bandaged. In reality, he has lost all his senses and is in very severe pain, he says.

– He is in a way in space, and it happened in a millisecond. This was a normal person – and then you are in the dark, completely deaf, and everything bleeds.

He stops while showing VG several X-rays of operations they have carried out. We just heard a bang louder than the others.

– That could be from one sliding combThe Russians use modified Soviet-era glide bombs. They have greater precision than artillery shells, and can cause great destruction.but it is far away – a few kilometres, he notes.

As they extract the piece of drone lodged deep in Yevhen’s thigh muscle, the surgeons listen to “Still DRE”

– Hold on, Yevhen, says one of them as he curls his toes.

He is given painkillers, but it is not enough to remove all feeling.

Yevhen became a soldier on March 11 – the day before he was actually supposed to get married. Before that he was a taxi driver and goods loader. He is expecting a child in September.

Hazardous evacuation

The first minutes and hours after a serious injury are essential. But it is not always possible to evacuate an injured soldier immediately.

Evacuation is difficult because drones are swarming in the sky. It also makes it impossible to provide good health care on the ground out in the field.

Sometimes the soldiers have lain long enough in the trenches that the wounds have begun to rot.

– The evacuation teams are trying to bring them here as quickly as possible. Here it is about saving lives, and making the patients able to be sent on.

It doesn’t always go well. Two days ago, two rescue teams, with four people each, were killed while extracting a wounded Ukrainian soldier. He had been lying along the front waiting for help for almost two weeks, in a very vulnerable place.

Evacuating the wounded is one of the most dangerous jobs one can be assigned to.

– But every warrior must have the opportunity to be evacuated if he is injured, says Svyatoslav.

Anton Kudinov contributed in the field to this report.