On July 13, the organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) condemned what it described as “Russia’s deliberate strategy to destroy the healthcare system” in Ukraine, documenting a consistent pattern of attacks throughout the war. Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
According to MSF, from April 2022 to December 2025, the organization recorded more than 20 attacks on facilities associated with the medical charity. In a statement, MSF said that Russia is conducting “relentless attacks on medical facilities and medical personnel in Ukraine.” The organization claims these actions “appear to constitute a deliberate strategy to destroy the healthcare system and collectively punish the population, rather than being an accidental consequence of the Russian invasion.”
Scale of destruction and statements
The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded 2,815 attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine from February 2022 to the end of 2025, with the vast majority involving violence using heavy weapons. Of these, 2,319 attacks directly targeted medical facilities. In total, these assaults resulted in 224 deaths and 902 injuries, according to WHO, which tracks attacks but does not assign responsibility.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health reports that Russian forces have damaged or destroyed more than 2,500 medical facilities during the same period, including 327 that were completely destroyed.
“These attacks are too consistent, too frequent, and too precise to be accidental,” said Robin Meldrum, MSF coordinator in Ukraine. “When hospitals are hit repeatedly, when ambulances become targets for precision drones, when medical workers die while delivering medicine in clearly marked vehicles — this is not a coincidence. It is a pattern; patterns are driven by intent.”
Impact of FPV drones on medical response
According to MSF, attacks on medical infrastructure have created a crisis in access to care for individuals needing emergency treatment or management of chronic diseases. The medical humanitarian organization noted that this directly leads to suffering and even death from manageable conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and epilepsy.
Medical facilities that remain operational are facing a severe shortage of staff, with the number of doctors in a hospital supported by MSF in the city of Kherson decreasing by 66 percent since 2022.
Meanwhile, MSF teams in eastern and southern Ukraine are working under the “constant threat” of attacks by first-person view drones (FPV drones), which allow operators to identify and strike targets with high precision in real time. On September 29, 2025, a nurse and the director of a medical center supported by MSF were struck by a Russian FPV drone in the city of Lyman, Donetsk region, while delivering medicine in a clearly marked vehicle.
The non-governmental organization stated that its medical personnel near the front line are observing how drone warfare is rapidly outpacing medical response. “Where previously injuries were mostly caused by artillery, now drone strikes account for an increasing proportion of trauma cases,” MSF noted. These attacks result in numerous casualties with multiple simultaneous wounds, higher infection rates, and an increase in sepsis cases.
MSF called on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law and urged states with influence over Russia to demand an end to attacks on medical facilities.
Source: The Straits Times
