Putin’s victims spared death due to AI and incredible medical advances

Ukraine has sent more than 200 experts in anti-drone warfare to help Gulf nations repel attacks from Iran, but that’s not the only way that life-and-death skills developed since the Russian invasion four years ago benefit the country’s friends and allies.

Surgeons and medics treating soldiers and civilians injured in the conflict are also pushing the boundaries of care and developing new techniques which will save lives, and change lives, around the world. Artificial intelligence is being used to triage patients, and identify those who most urgently need care, and wearables have been developed to monitor vital signs and trigger alerts if a patient is deteriorating.

Ukrainian innovators have developed a backpack dialysis device which allows frontline medics to perform immediate blood cleaning treatment, in order to prevent organ failure, before wounded soldiers can be evacuated. Alongside this is an infusion device which administers medication and fluids. “To put it simply, this is a backpack that can replace the capabilities of an entire hospital,” says Colonel Valeriy Vyshnivskyi, director of implementation at JATEC – the Joint NATO-Ukraine Analysis, Training, and Education Center – in neighbouring Poland.

There is a long line of medical advances born of wartime necessity. The open-plan wards which Florence Nightingale designed during the Crimean War to minimise the spread of infection and allow nurses to monitor large numbers of patients at the same time are still in use throughout the NHS.

While Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 it was not until the Second World War, and the need for antibiotics became paramount, that a team led by Howard Florey discovered how to purify the penicillin mould and produce low-cost lifesaving antibacterials.

Conflict continues to drive care, and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has established United24 as a government-backed donation platform that allows anyone to donate towards medical care and rehabilitation for those wounded in the conflict, as well as humanitarian and defence projects such as defensive drones and mine-removal robots.

To date United24 has raised more than £45million for medical care alone, and this has been used to buy lifesaving equipment including mobile X-rays, artificial lung machines for children and hundreds of ambulances and generators.

It is currently raising money to buy six sets of advanced laser and microscopic surgery equipment which surgeons can use to detect and remove debris, stop bleeding without damaging delicate eye tissue and perform the corneal surgeries and lens replacement procedures which can restore sight.

• Visit u24.gov.ua to make a donation

THE SURGEON:

When she trained as a paediatric ophthalmologist, Svitlana Fedotova could never have imagined having to perform the sight-saving surgeries she now undertakes, often between the drone attacks and power outages that have become a feature of everyday life in Kiev and other wartorn Ukrainian cities.

During our video call she says: “Yesterday we had a huge attack on Kiev. There were lots of bombs and drones in the morning, so we couldn’t work. Then, when the attack ended we got to work like nothing had happened. That is our life now.”

Svitlana is originally from Donetsk, but when the Russians first invaded Ukraine in 2014 she was forced to flee with her daughter Kateryna, who was four at the time, and little more than her diploma. She says: “At the beginning of my work, I never dreamed I would work with war trauma, but this is now our life.”

Many of the injuries Svitlana and her colleagues treat stem from drone attacks. As well as having to remove plastic and other debris from the eye, the soldiers and civilians she cares for often have multiple injuries which create additional challenges.

“War injuries are very hard for us because it’s not only the eyes which are damaged, It’s very often hands, legs, body, we have complete trauma and often need to wait for other surgeries to be done before we can do anything to try to save someone’s sight,” she continues.

“Sometimes the patient cannot sit up, which makes it very difficult to investigate injuries. In this situation we have to take them into an operating room and use the surgical microscope to assess the damage.”

Svitlana adds: “For me the hardest thing is to see the chemical and thermal injuries. When we treat these patients, we don’t know what chemicals were used, we just see the terrible injuries to the eyes and skin.”

Oleksandr, 29, is an air-defence gunner who brought down countless Russian drones before he was injured in an artillery attack while defending the city of Kostiantynivka, in Ukraine’s frontline ‘fortress belt’ in October 2024. He has asked us not to use his surname to protect his family.“We were in an open area, and secondary fragments from a shell reached us. A piece struck my eye. “There was no fear. The first thing I thought about was whether my brothers-in-arms were alive,” he recalls. “My arms and legs were intact — that meant I was alive. I thought the eye was lost, yes, but there was no panic.

“I received first medical aid within 10 to 15 minutes, and was evacuated after about 30 minutes. At that point, the question was not even about vision — the priority was to save the eye itself. The condition was so critical that doctors were not sure it could be saved at all.

“I underwent six surgeries: first to preserve the eye, and then to attempt to restore at least some vision. The most difficult surgery was the corneal transplant, which was done together with a lens replacement.

“Now I have a little vision, and it is still unknown how the condition of my eye will develop further.”

When soldiers from his unit ask if he is leaving the service he used to say, “No, I just need a bit more treatment — then I’ll be back.” And at one point he was going to return to combat, but a detached retina ended his hopes of ongoing service and he was discharged last year.

Oleksandr adds: “There should be no war. Not everyone understands how evil war truly is. It destroys lives, destinies, and health — and it never passes without leaving scars.” And, as service men and women who have seen combat know, many of these scars are not visible.

“Almost everyone around me now is military. It’s become harder to communicate with civilians. When people start talking about how hard things are at work, I don’t always know what to say.”

THE CIVILIAN

Yulia Matvieieva is 32, and lives in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea which is at the frontline of the war. She had just woken up on July 26 last year, and was thinking of the work day ahead when her apartment was showered with shattered glass and fragments from a Russian attack.

More than 300 pieces of glass were embedded in her face and eyes alone. “The pain was unimaginable and I lost a lot of blood,” recalls Yulia. “But physical pain is nothing compared to the moment when you realise that you cannot see.”

Within 24 hours she had undergone three procedures. The first was to stitch a deep wound on her arm, the second , to remove glass and fragments from her face and stitch the deeper wounds, took three hours, and the last was a six-hour procedure, under general anaesthetic, to try to save some of her sight.

Yulia says: “My left eye was torn into four parts, the doctor said it looked like a head of broccoli. All of the membranes were completely detached, and the cornea was damaged. The doctors stitched the eye back together. My right eye was also severely damaged, but there was a large fragment inside it, and the doctors in Mykolaiv did not know how to proceed.”

So Yulia was transferred to Odessa, for further treatment, though she was so heavily sedated she remembers little of the two or three days that followed. She has subsequently undergone another four surgeries, first to remove a piece of glass 2cm by 1cm from her right eye and then to try to repair the structural damage to her eyes.

Further procedures will be needed, but she can now see light in her right eye and make out silhouettes of nearby people and objects with her left eye. “There is no definitive prognosis as yet, but I am confident that I will be able to see.”

However, she adds: “To be honest, I don’t really hope for anything in the future. The war has taught all of us to live here and now, today, because you never know what tomorrow may bring. We all live in the present moment.

“To the people of the United Kingdom, I wish that you believe in miracles, because miracles do happen if you truly believe in them. In my case, doctors told me that I would never be able to see. But I can see now, not perfectly yet, but it is already an amazing result.”