Four years ago, Russian forces invaded Ukraine at scale crossing the border with approximately 190,000 soldiers, artillery, tanks, and fighter jets. After Russian forces made some territorial gains, Ukraine’s military took back vast swathes of territory in late 2022, notably in Kherson region. Since then, Russian forces have advanced incrementally, while skirmishes, exchanges of artillery and drones have completely demolished towns caught in the crossfire. Cities where MSF teams used to work, like Bakhmut, Kostiantynivka, as well as parts of Kharkiv and Zaporizhia oblasts and dozens of settlements along the front line, have been emptied of residents, buildings with structural integrity, trees, animals. Some towns are so strewn with fiber optic drone cables that from above they resemble spiderwebs. With a front line that stretches more than 1,000 kilometres, it’s difficult to illustrate the scale of destruction.

MSF teams have witnessed this destruction as they themselves have been forced to repeatedly adapt and move according to the shifts of the war, leaving hospitals, ambulance bases, and mobile clinic locations.

While our teams have been forced to move, and approximately four million people are internally displaced in Ukraine, the pattern our teams have witnessed is that the last to leave, are often the most vulnerable. From the evacuations MSF conducted in 2022, to what we see in the displacement shelters in Pavlohrad today, elderly people, many with chronic conditions or serious injuries, delay leaving their communities until the hospitals, police stations, post offices, schools and pharmacies have long closed. For some, there is simply nowhere to go, and no money to live on when they leave.

In this package, we will use a data visualisation map to illustrate how the frontline has forced our teams to move and adapt over the past four years. Through an accompanying article, images and testimonies from our patients and colleagues, we will aim to show who and what has been left behind.