Rutland nurse in Ukraine left shocked after Russian tank attack on hospital
He says he 'never expected' to be offering humanitarian support in Europe
A Rutland man has told of his horror after being shown the devastation caused by a Russian tank to a hospital in Ukraine.
53-year-old David Anderson is a volunteer with the frontline aid charity UK-Med and has been stationed in Ukraine since March.
On a recent visit to Trostianets in Eastern Ukraine, he was shown the remains of a Russian tank that was blown up after bombarding a hospital - with the gun turret still pointing at the ruined building.
"The tank is being guarded as evidence of a war crime and I could not believe what I was seeing", David said.
“I was shown round the wards and there was just devastation everywhere where the tank shells had hit. It’s rendered a 170-bed hospital completely inoperable.”
The scale of destruction
David's no stranger to the hard-hitting sights that his job brings, but he says nothing comes close to what he's witnessing in Eastern Europe.
"I'm reasonably comfortable seeing limb injuries having worked in south Sudan and other places, but oh my God, the scale of this. We walked into one hospital and they said there were 200 people but it felt like more.'
'There were people with traumatic amputations, flesh burns, blast injuries, just horrific injuries. It’s the volume that is genuinely astounding.”
Since his invasion, President Putin has presided over 130 attacks on healthcare facilities, while more than 100 fire stations and 250 fire engines have been destroyed.
Is there a Government response?
UK-Med, David's charity, has just received £600,000 from UK Government to continue to provide humanitarian support to those impacted by the conflict.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: “The Kremlin continues to lie about deliberate attacks on Ukraine’s hospitals and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
“Now our vital humanitarian support will help save lives and deliver medical expertise to the frontline.”