Inside the hospitals that concealed Russian casualties

Vilnius, Lithuania — As his daughters dozed off within the again seat, his spouse filmed him driving, eyes narrowed, centered on the darkish highway forward. Andrei, a health care provider, had been plotting their escape from Belarus since 2020, when the Kremlin-backed regime cracked down on a well-liked rebellion, sending the nation spiraling deeper into authoritarian rule and engulfing it in a local weather of worry.

When Russia launched its assault on Ukraine from Belarus’ southern doorstep, getting out out of the blue felt extra pressing. His household watched from the home windows of their condominium block as helicopters and missiles thundered by the sky. Inside days, Andrei — whose title has been modified for his security — mentioned he discovered himself being compelled to deal with Russian troopers injured in Moscow’s botched assault on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Then, on the finish of March, he was jailed on trumped-up corruption costs. After his launch in Might, and punctiliously weighing the dangers, he determined it was time to depart.

In order to not spark any suspicion, Andrei requested one in every of their neighbors to sneak the household’s suitcases, full of authorized paperwork, a number of garments and a photograph album, out of their constructing and stash them in a automobile. Late one Friday night in August, after he had completed his shift on the hospital, they met in a car parking zone with none safety cameras to select up their baggage. Then the household set off.

They stopped on a rural, dust highway and Andrei kissed his spouse and ladies goodbye. All being properly, they might cross by the official border checkpoint and reunite with him in Lithuania, the place he deliberate to say asylum. Inside one in every of his daughter’s toys, Andrei had hidden a USB flash drive carrying proof of what he had witnessed — dozens of X-rays of wounded Russian troopers. He advised them he cherished them, turned and walked into the woods.

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko allowed his shut ally Russia in February to make use of the nation, which shares a 674-mile border with Ukraine, as a staging floor for its invasion. Along with his permission, Russian President Vladimir Putin handled Belarus as an extension of Moscow’s territory, sending gear and round 30,000 troops ostensibly for joint military exercises — the most important deployment to the previous Soviet state because the finish of the Chilly Battle. Russia erected short-term camps and hospitals in Belarus’ frozen fields, dispatching navy {hardware}, artillery, helicopters and fighter jets close to the border.

When Putin declared his “special military operation” in a pre-dawn televised deal with on February 24, he despatched missiles, paratroopers and an enormous armored column of troopers rolling south from Belarusian soil, setting in movement what was meant to be a lightning strike to decapitate the federal government in Kyiv. However as Russia’s advance stalled and setbacks mounted, Moscow started to spirit wounded troopers again throughout the border to Belarus for remedy in a number of civilian hospitals, a CNN investigation has revealed. The medical doctors working there have been drafted right into a warfare that they didn’t join, unwittingly enlisted as quasi-combat medics and obliged by their hippocratic oath to supply life-saving care.

Many have been compelled to signal non-disclosure agreements, advised not to discuss what they noticed. Some, like Andrei, later fled. From their working tables, Belarusian medical employees gained maybe the clearest sense of the dimensions of casualties suffered by Russia within the early weeks of the warfare — describing younger, shell-shocked troopers who thought they have been being despatched for workouts solely to seek out themselves shedding a limb in a warfare they have been ill-prepared to combat. Whereas Lukashenko admitted that Belarus was offering medical assist to Russian navy personnel, little is thought about what occurred within the hospitals the place they have been taken, which have been saved beneath strict surveillance. In interviews with Belarusian medical doctors, members of the nation’s medical diaspora, human rights activists, navy analysts and safety sources, CNN examined the function Belarus performed in treating Russian casualties, whereas the Kremlin sought to conceal them. Their testimonies and documentation — together with medical data — provide insights into the Belarusian authorities’s complicity within the Ukraine warfare, as fears mount that the nation is perhaps sucked additional into the combat.

Precisely what number of Russian troopers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine stays a thriller to all however a number of contained in the Kremlin. The Russian protection ministry mentioned on March 2 that early casualties amounted to 498 Russian troopers killed and practically 1,600 injured in motion. However US and NATO estimates across the identical time put the variety of useless considerably increased: between 3,000 and 10,000. Seven months into the warfare, Russian Protection Minister Sergei Shoigu revised the official tally, saying practically 6,000 Russian troopers had died. The Pentagon mentioned in August that it believed the true toll was way more: as many as 80,000 dead or wounded.

Belarus’ stranglehold on info — Lukashenko’s regime has put impartial information media beneath extreme stress, restricted free speech and launched new laws extending the dying penalty for “makes an attempt to hold out acts of terrorism” — has supplied helpful cowl for Russia in repressing particulars about its injured and useless. In current months, various individuals have been arrested for filming Russian navy autos, based on Viasna, a Belarusian human rights group whose imprisoned founder was just lately awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Regardless of the repressive surroundings, hints of Moscow’s troop losses have emerged on social media and native experiences. In late February, the Belarusian Hajun project, an activist monitoring group that tracks navy exercise within the nation, began sharing photos on Telegram of Russian medical autos ferrying fighters throughout the border from the frontline. Drawing on a community of trusted native sources, the group posted footage of inexperienced, Soviet-era “PAZ” buses marked with purple crosses and a white letter “V” — an emblem believed to face for “Vostok”, or east — and armored ambulances in Gomel area.

“We are able to verify they (Russians) used Belarusian infrastructure, together with medical buildings and discipline hospitals. In addition they used morgues … they usually used prepare stations or airbases to move useless individuals or injured individuals, now we have images of that,” Anton Motolko, a Belarusian blogger who fled Minsk in 2020 and based Belarusian Hajun venture, advised CNN. Motolko mentioned his sources advised him that morgues within the space have been overflowing, and {that a} regular stream of wounded troopers had arrived at Mazyr Metropolis Hospital, the place Andrei labored.

In mid-February, Andrei watched in horror as his hometown of Mazyr seemingly become a sprawling navy base — armored tanks rolled down the streets, Russian troopers roamed native retailers and bought drunk at bars downtown. He and his household now not felt secure, and averted being exterior after darkish. Quickly they started to suspect that Russia was making ready for warfare. Because the navy drills have been attributable to wrap up on February 20, Andrei mentioned his hospital administration prolonged a directive to deal with Russian troopers freed from cost till March 10. “They will need to have thought the warfare would finish by then,” Andrei mentioned, including that, two days later, Russian officers from the sector hospital exterior Mazyr cleaned out town’s blood financial institution reserves.

On the morning of February 24, the primary day of combating, Andrei recalled a hospital official gathering all the medical doctors into a gathering room, ordering them to maintain 250 beds free for Russian casualties, cease all deliberate surgical procedures and ship what Belarusian sufferers they might house. “Then they warned us that we weren’t allowed to share any details about Russian troopers. We needed to signal a non-disclosure type, forbidding us to share any images, paperwork,” Andrei mentioned. “They advised us that we have been being watched by the Russian Federal Safety Companies (FSB), that they’d methods of monitoring our telephones.” Whereas he didn’t see any Russian FSB, Andrei mentioned he did discover native Belarusian State Safety Committee (KGB) brokers stalking the halls of the hospital. CNN has reached out to Mazyr Metropolis Hospital for remark.

Aliaksandr Azarau, head of ByPol, a corporation arrange by ex-Belarusian police and safety service members, advised CNN that Mazyr authorities went to nice lengths to maintain details about the variety of wounded Russian troopers, and the forms of accidents they sustained, beneath wraps. Azarau mentioned that the KGB departments for Mazyr, together with the area’s division of inside affairs, put Mazyr Metropolis Hospital “beneath round the clock surveillance” whereas ”warning the employees of private accountability for disclosing details about navy personnel present process remedy within the hospital.”

Nonetheless, Andrei managed to secretly photocopy the X-rays of dozens of troops handled at Mazyr Metropolis Hospital, which he shared with CNN. “What I took with me, that a part of the archive, may have gotten me into authorized hassle for espionage,” he mentioned, including that he had taken the danger to supply proof of a aspect of the warfare that has to this point gone unseen, smuggling them out of Belarus in his daughter’s toy cellphone. The scans included the names and ages of the troopers, a lot of whom have been between 19 and 21 years outdated, capturing their accidents in stark black and white.

Andrei mentioned he noticed the most important wave of casualties arrive at Mazyr hospital en masse within the early hours of February 28. After receiving a name that the troopers have been incoming, the medical doctors assembled on the entrance to the emergency room round midnight, ready. Quickly, busloads of injured troops started to pour in. Russian troopers carted them inside on stretchers, dumping them on the entrance doorways, Andrei mentioned.

In actuality, the hospital was filled with troopers, Andrei mentioned. Some have been lacking eyes, others required amputations — having arrived with gangrenous, shattered limbs — a number of have been paralyzed, one had misplaced a part of his mind, one other his decrease jaw. A number of had been sporting tourniquets for days to staunch the blood, their our bodies peppered with bullets and shrapnel, the X-rays confirmed. “There have been extra wounded, in want of an operation, than we had working tables,” Andrei mentioned. “The Russians simply gave us their injured [soldiers], and didn’t give a rattling about them.”

Most of the Russians had been combating in areas exterior of Kyiv — in Hostomel, the place they suffered main losses at a key airfield, in Bucha and Borodianka, suburbs that they terrorized for weeks, and in Chernobyl, the place their forces have been uncovered to radiation within the extremely poisonous zone referred to as the “Purple Forest.” Andrei mentioned he handled Russian paratroopers and particular forces injured within the botched assault on Hostomel airfield, the place they advised him their helicopter got here beneath assault. “They have been skilled killers. We needed to deal with them, that was our job. I felt disgusted by the entire thing. However, as a health care provider, I’m not actually allowed to really feel disgusted,” he mentioned. Russian Main Common Sergei Nyrkov, who suffered a extreme belly damage in Chernobyl, was additionally handled at Mazyr hospital, based on his X-ray, which was amongst these Andrei smuggled out.

However the majority of the injured have been younger, inexperienced troopers and conscripts from distant components of Russia, Andrei mentioned. CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Protection about these allegations, in addition to accusations it has co-opted Belarus to hold out an “act of aggression” towards Ukraine, in violation of worldwide regulation.

On March 1, at a gathering of Belarus’ Safety Council, Lukashenko acknowledged that hospitals have been offering Russian troopers with life-saving remedy. “We deal with them and can proceed treating these guys – in Gomel, Mazyr, and I feel in another district capital when they’re transported to us. What’s fallacious with that? Injured individuals have at all times acquired medical remedy throughout any warfare,” he mentioned, earlier than dismissing experiences that Russia had suffered large losses as faux information.

“Our self-exiled opposition and the remaining shout about 1000’s of injured [Russian military personnel] delivered to Gomel. Nothing like that. We have handled about 160-170 injured on this total interval,” Lukashenko added.

However Andrei and different medical professionals within the area inform a distinct story. In early March, 40 to 50 Russian casualties have been delivered to Mazyr Metropolis Hospital daily, shuttled out and in once more like a “conveyor belt,” Andrei mentioned. Most arrived at nighttime of evening, or early within the morning, in inexperienced Russian navy buses and ambulances. “We, the medical doctors on the hospital, thought that possibly they have been apprehensive about safety, in order that they introduced them beneath the duvet of the evening. They have been afraid of highway visitors to see the purple cross on their autos. Folks would know,” Andrei mentioned. The Russians additionally tried to carry the useless to the hospital, he mentioned, including: “They didn’t know what to do with them.”

Anna Krasulina, spokeswoman for exiled Belarusian opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, advised Ukrainian parliamentary TV channel “Rada” in March that the morgues in Mazyr were flooded with the bodies of dead Russian soldiers. In April, Tsikhanouskaya met with members of the US State Department in Washington, DC, handing over evidence of Lukashenko’s involvement within the warfare in Ukraine. The paperwork, seen by CNN, element how Belarus supplied key infrastructure to Russia, together with missile launch positions, railway traces, and medical help.

Citing open supply info, Franak Viačorka, Tsikhanouskaya’s chief political adviser, advised CNN that Russians have been utilizing hospitals in each the Gomel and Brest areas between the beginning of the warfare and April, however that there have been additionally “many instances when medical doctors refused to take Russian troopers,” describing this as grassroots resistance. He added that Russians haven’t been utilizing infrastructure like hospitals in Belarus since April.

Mazyr was one in every of at the least three hospitals in Gomel area that handled Russian casualties, based on medical and safety sources, who estimated that the services collectively cared for a whole lot of troopers. Mikalai, a health care provider who left the area and whose title has additionally been modified for his security, mentioned that the Regional Medical Hospital and the Republican Analysis Middle for Radiation Medication and Human Ecology have been amongst these offering remedy, however that the latter was largely working with Russian medical employees introduced in for the warfare.

After receiving a affected person transferred from the Republican Analysis Middle for Radiation Medication and Human Ecology, Mikalai mentioned that he had been interested in how the hospital was working. So, late one evening, he drove slowly previous the complicated. “I noticed when it began getting darkish, navy medical buses coming to the hospital … green-colored ‘PAZ’ autos, with their home windows lined with white fabric,” he mentioned.

Azarau, the pinnacle of ByPol, mentioned that the Republican Analysis Middle for Radiation Medication and Human Ecology was used to deal with Russian servicemen who took half within the assault on the Chernobyl nuclear energy plant, a few of whom confirmed indicators of radiation poisoning. The hospital was initially constructed within the early Nineteen Nineties to supply specialised medical care to the native inhabitants affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe.

Mikalai mentioned it was no shock that the Belarusian and Russian authorities went to nice lengths to maintain the truth of what was occurring behind closed doorways in these hospitals a secret. “A large number of wounded younger troopers is a unclean, soiled stain that doesn’t correlate with the thought of this nice Russian invasion,” he mentioned, including that the authorities needed to present the impression that the scenario was beneath management and experiences of an enormous variety of casualties have been faux. “However that is the unhealthy reality … they tried to cover it.”

Unpicking the function that Belarus has performed within the Ukraine warfare has taken on new urgency since Lukashenko introduced in October that Russian troopers would deploy to the nation to type a brand new, “regional grouping” and perform joint workouts with Belarusian troops, elevating fears that he may draw the nation more directly into the conflict.

“The actual fact is that Belarus way back ceded its sovereignty in vital methods to Russia,” State Division spokesperson Ned Value mentioned in a briefing on October 12, responding to a query about Belarus’ posturing, which the USA is monitoring carefully. “The truth that President Putin has been in a position to make use of what must be sovereign Belarusian territory as a staging floor, the truth that brutal assaults towards the individuals of Ukraine have emanated from a sovereign third nation, Belarus on this case, it’s one other testomony to the truth that the Lukashenko regime doesn’t have the very best pursuits of its individuals at coronary heart.”

Not solely has Russia infringed on Belarus’ sovereignty, it has additionally posed a critical problem to NATO — three members of the alliance share a border with Belarus. Putin has been laying the groundwork to remodel Belarus right into a vassal state for a while. After a rigged presidential election in 2020 cemented Lukashenko’s lengthy reign, triggering widespread pro-democracy protests, he clung to energy with the assistance of Putin. Russia backed the ruthless crackdown on demonstrations, and gave Belarus a $1.5 billion lifeline to evade the brunt of sanctions, but it surely got here with strings connected. Beholden to the Kremlin, Lukashenko has supported Russia’s navy actions from the sidelines, to this point avoiding sending his personal troops into the fray. However he could also be compelled to shift his place, as Putin racks up losses.

“So far as our participation within the particular navy operation in Ukraine is anxious, we’re taking part in it. We don’t disguise it. However we’re not killing anybody,” Lukashenko mentioned in early October. “We provide medical assist to individuals. We have handled individuals if vital,” he added.

Nonetheless, many in Belarus are terrified that may change. A majority of Belarusians don’t need their nation to participate within the warfare, based on a current Chatham Home ballot carried out on-line, which discovered that solely 5% favored sending troops to assist Russia. Andrej Stryzhak, a Belarusian human rights activist and founding father of BySol, an initiative that helps victims of political persecution in Belarus, who himself faces politically motivated costs for “funding extremist formations,” mentioned that the group noticed a surge in requests for assist when the invasion began. The group arrange a Telegram channel with recommendation on the best way to flee overseas, for individuals who don’t assist the warfare or have been afraid of being mobilized themselves. “We took greater than 10,000 consultations … and now now we have a Telegram channel with 30,000 subscribers,” Stryzhak mentioned, including: “It’s very intensive work for us.”

Andrei reached out to BySol for assist getting in a foreign country, however in late August, with the borders to Ukraine and Russia largely impassible, they have been unable to help him. In the long run, he was aided by an off-the-cuff community of Belarusian dissidents dwelling in exile in Lithuania, who determine potential crossing factors. They mentioned they too have seen a surge within the variety of Belarusian males fleeing for worry they are going to be forced to fight in Ukraine.