Key points
- Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine are a deliberate strategy of Russia, not a coincidence.
- Ministry of Health: from 2022 to 2025, more than 2,500 medical facilities were damaged or destroyed, 327 of them completely.
- WHO recorded 2,811 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine during this period.
- MSF lost 4 hospitals, 7 ambulance bases, and access to more than 80 villages in six regions.
- Access to medical care in the front-line regions has decreased from 72% to 35%.
The organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) published a report ‘No place to heal’, which documents the ongoing attacks on healthcare facilities and medical personnel in Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Health, from February 2022 to the end of 2025, Russian troops damaged or destroyed more than 2,500 medical facilities, including 327 completely.
WHO recorded 2,811 attacks on healthcare facilities during the same period.
MSF itself recorded more than 20 attacks on medical facilities it worked with. 4 hospitals where its teams worked were completely destroyed, 7 ambulance bases had to be abandoned, and access was lost to more than 80 villages in six regions where mobile primary care clinics previously operated.
These attacks are too systematic, too frequent, and too precise to be accidental; when hospitals are repeatedly hit, when ambulances become targets for high-precision drones, when medical workers are killed while delivering medicines in clearly marked vehicles – this is not a coincidence. This is a pattern.
– Robin Meldrum, coordinator of MSF programs in Ukraine.
A survey of 187 civilians in the front-line regions by the organization showed that the share of people with stable access to medical care decreased from 72% to 35%, and the share of those who receive help rarely or not at all increased from 7% to 35%.
This leads to complications and deaths from diseases that can be controlled – cardiovascular, diabetes, epilepsy. In one of the hospitals in Kherson, which is supported by MSF, the number of doctors has decreased by 66% since 2022.
MSF teams in the east and south of Ukraine work under the constant threat of FPV drone attacks. On September 29, 2025, such a drone hit a nurse and the director of a medical center in Lyman, Donetsk region, who were delivering medicines in a clearly marked vehicle – the director lost his leg. According to international humanitarian law, deliberate attacks on marked medical personnel and transport can be qualified as a war crime.
MSF surgeons also record a change in the nature of injuries: if earlier trauma was mainly caused by artillery, now an increasing proportion of injuries are caused by drone strikes, which leads to multiple simultaneous injuries, a higher level of infection, and an increase in cases of sepsis.
This year marks 10 years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2286 on the protection of medical personnel, patients, and healthcare infrastructure during armed conflicts.
The organization calls on countries with influence over Russia to demand an end to attacks on healthcare facilities, and on the UN Security Council to investigate and publicly condemn such attacks.
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