Oleksandr wouldn’t be alive today had it not been for the quick thinking, determination and skills of our Ukrainian MOAS medics.
His comrades were sure he wasn’t going to make it. A shell had shredded his lungs, spine and limbs. But Stanislav and Volodymyr, the medics of MOAS, the international humanitarian disruptor, reckoned he had a chance. They performed desperate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on him while racing to the nearest hospital in one of our 50 ambulances. A year later, the 31-year-old lieutenant is on the mend, undergoing intensive rehabilitation therapy and determined to rejoin his unit at the front line.
Later this month in Kyiv, he will meet for the first time the medics who saved his life. And he’ll tell his remarkable story to an audience of military, political and medical leaders celebrating the launch of Sirens of Hope: The MOAS Mission to Save Lives in Ukraine, a new book showcasing the heroic work performed by our all-Ukrainian teams of medics. We employ 150 of them, each one highly skilled and well paid. We don’t use volunteers or foreign nationals.
Oleksandr is just one of the more than 45,000 lives we have saved since the start of the war. That’s the equivalent of at least six brigades. Hard to believe in one of the world’s deadliest and most important conflicts but MOAS, an entirely private initiative, is now the largest provider of emergency evacuation services to Ukraine’s armed forces.
As General Andrii Verba, a top military medic, told us the other day, we are now responsible for evacuating 72 per cent of the most critical casualties. In some areas that figure rises to 80 per cent. This is an extraordinary situation. This is not a boast, rather a plea for support.
What we are doing in Ukraine is new but it’s not rocket science. It’s basic mathematics. Saving Ukrainian soldiers’ lives helps Ukraine stay in the war. It’s as simple as that.
If only everything was so straightforward. The drawback of disrupting the humanitarian sector is that bureaucracies and governments are typically slow to respond and adapt to the new realities.
So, while Western countries continue to supply lethal weaponry to Ukraine, no governments to date, the EU included, have been able to help fund this life-saving operation. USAID, one of the largest official aid agencies in the world, cannot support it, either.
The reason? Saving lives at the medical front line can’t be considered humanitarian because we work in direct support to the military. Kafka would have had fun with that.
Under the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, the obligation to provide “humane treatment” to the sick and wounded is universal. There is no distinction between military personnel and civilians. This is explicit: “There shall be no distinction among them founded on any grounds other than medical ones.” A soldier, in other words, just like a civilian, is entitled to humane treatment. We provide it.
The return on investment is not measured in dollars but in lives saved?- Christopher Catrambone
During the Syrian civil war, a host of Western governments backed the White Helmets, the volunteer organisation that saved thousands of lives, including Syrian regime soldiers and even ISIS fighters, delivering medical evacuation and urban search and rescue. USAID provided $23m, the British government £38.4m.
Our operating costs in Ukraine are $1m a month, a formidable challenge in terms of private fundraising but small beer in terms of international support. As a result, we depend primarily on billionaires.
If this sounds like a minor complaint, think again. It’s a desperately urgent situation. Lives depend on it, meaning the fate of Ukraine, and, therefore, arguably the West, depends on it. Hospitallers, the under-resourced group of volunteer medics, have been folded into the Ukrainian military. The Red Cross and Médecins sans Frontières are either unable or unwilling to support the military with long-distance evacuations of the worst casualties.
We’re the last ones standing. New challenges require new thinking. We’re now thinking of offering NATO countries the opportunity to train their military medics with our teams. There is no substitute for real-conflict experience. We hope governments supporting Ukraine will catch up with these battlefield innovations. If they can do it with drones, they should be able to manage life-saving emergency response.
One of our backers in New York recently likened our operation to a start-up, albeit with one key difference. Here, the return on investment is not measured in dollars but in lives saved. As Oleksandr says: “Every life saved keeps Ukraine in the fight.”
With America and much of Europe distracted by elections, and Ukraine on the rack, this is more critical than ever.
Christopher Catrambone is the founder of MOAS.