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The Kyiv Independent’s contributor Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke spent a day with a mobile team from the State Emergency Service in Nikopol in the south of Ukraine as they responded to relentless drone, artillery, and mortar strikes from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River. Nikopol is located across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.

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Ministry: Over 75% of injured Ukrainian soldiers return to service after rehabilitation

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Ministry: Over 75% of injured Ukrainian soldiers return to service after rehabilitation
Photo for illustrative purposes. Ukrainian soldier, Maksym Morozov, suffering from a recurring back problem, does exercises with a physical therapist at a rehabilitation clinic working with injured soldiers on September 23, 2023 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

More than 75% of injured Ukrainian soldiers return to service after rehabilitation, Natalia Kalmykova, a deputy defense minister, said on July 27, Interfax Ukraine reported.

Kyiv does not disclose the total number of injured Ukrainian soldiers since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. At least 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed from the beginning of the invasion through late February 2024, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Soldiers who suffered injuries of varying severity can undergo rehabilitation at almost every health care facility, both civilian and military, Kalmykova said.

"We have a very high percentage of high-quality rehabilitation and return to service. Our Western partners, those countries that have never had such experience, such a war, also point this out," she added during a briefing on the sidelines of the Congress on Military Medicine and Mental Health in Kyiv.

Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said at the event that Ukraine and its NATO partners are planning to launch a project to create five rehabilitation centers for Ukrainian soldiers, the Suspilne media outlet reported. Equipped with modern technology, the centers will provide quality treatment to the soldiers, he said.

Mechinkov Hospital, a regional medical center in the city of Dnipro that treats front-line soldiers from Donbas, has received around 29,000 injured troops since the start of the full-scale war, hospital director Sergii Ryzhenko told the Kyiv Independent in June.

At Ukraine’s key hospital for wounded soldiers, surgeons work non-stop to save lives
Most soldiers are unconscious by the time they arrive at Mechnikov Hospital, the main gateway for the wounded fighting in Donbas. Located in Dnipro, a city of 1 million people 185 kilometers west of the front line, the massive Soviet-era medical facility works around the clock to save as
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Kateryna Denisova

News Editor

Kateryna Denisova works as a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a news editor at the NV media outlet for four years, covering mainly Ukrainian and international politics. Kateryna holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. She also was a fellow at journalism schools in the Czech Republic and Germany.

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