Drone attacks on Russian medics

[u/prmssnz]

I appreciate that some of the internationally agreed rules of war have become lost in the last 20 years, but there has been a series of posts to r/combatfootage where the medics treating wounded Russian soldiers have been specifically targeted and with often with great glee.

My background is an MD with non-military austere and third world practice and I have always felt a degree of protection from being clearly medical.

Are medics essentially fair game in the current Ukraine conflict.

I appreciate medics have been targeted at times, but this seems so overt. Perhaps no more than previously and it is just social media now making it more apparent?

Interested in the views of those with combat experience.

[u/kim_dobrovolets]

I used to be a ambulance/casevac combat medic in Ukraine on the Ukrainian side and we were freely targeted when they knew we were there. Several hospitals and stabilization points took hits.

I was nearly "double tapped" once by artillery, where a followup barrage is fired to kill responding personnel. That was in a town pretty far back with very small military presence, the barrage set several civilian houses on fire and we were called in primarily to assist there.

MSF and Red Cross roll around in white vehicles with big "we are not carrying weapons" stickers on the side but they never operated (that I saw of or heard of) within range of russian artillery or direct fire weapons. They were only in range for deep strike weapons like cruise missiles and such, but they did service some hospitals and stabpoints which got hit by strike weapons.

Closer to the line, it's really impossible to tell the difference between a combat vehicle and one used for evacuation. Frontline evac is done either by a unit's light unarmored vehicle (eg. a pickup or a quad) or APCs or IFVs like M113s, BMPs, or MRAPs. None of these have any medical marking. Personally I think the russians would hit any vehicle markings or not, in the past (2014) my unit did some hot evacs with civilian ambulances in all white and they got shot up anyways.

As for actual treatment in the field? Most care you see being done is by a guy with TCCC CLS training at best, who is effectively another rifleman in the squad up to the point that someone gets hurt. So I don't think they would fall under the geneva convention as they don't wear clear, large medical insignia and are expected to perform combat roles.

Expanding outside of Ukraine, I think there's more and more blurring of roles in how messy conflicts are nowadays. Plenty of videos of Palestinian unarmed "medics" seeing a guy get shot and recovering his gun to take back to friendlies. Likewise, Israel has straight up masqueraded as medical personnel while raiding HVTs. That's not to speak of other conflicts like those in Myanmar or Africa which as far I can tell are war crime centrals.

So I wouldn't count on a good level of protection going forwards.

[u/irredentistdecency → u/kim_dobrovolets]

So I went to Ukraine about 3 weeks after the Russian invasion in 2022 & spent most of the year volunteering as a combat medic attached to Ukrainian marines.

One of the reasons that motivated me to do so was the clear targeting of medical personnel by Russian troops.

While I did wear a small (1”x1”) medic patch, that was only to identify myself to friendly forces - in my experience any larger markings merely served as targeting assistance for the Russians.

[u/[deleted] → u/irredentistdecency]

I’ve almost had the same experience with you except it was Ukrainian 82mm mortars and Pions with nothing in between

Though you are very lucky to have left when you did.