Russia first made any healthcare on occupied territory contingent upon the person taking Russian citizenship. After almost four years of occupation, emergency healthcare and a person’s very survival can depend on when the emergency arose. If after curfew, the person may well die because no ambulance will come before the next morning.
At a press conference on 8 January 2026, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Administration, described the dire situation in occupied parts of Kherson oblast, with armed searches, abductions, torture or killings; looting; and forced mobilization on the increase, and an increasingly acute lack of the most basic services. The medical situation is critical, he said, with people being refused healthcare; medicines not available and medical establishments closing. He added that medical brigades without trained professionals are sent out to people and are, obviously, unable to provide any real assistance.
The situation appears to be the same in all parts of Ukraine which came under occupation after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. in a recent study, Oleh Baturin from the Centre for Journalist Investigations [CJI] focused on Russia’s destruction of the medical system in occupied Kherson oblast.
He began with a graphic and harrowing example of just how bad the situation is. A 70-year-old resident of a village in occupied Kakhovka raion fell ill in 2023, with stomach problems and a number of other illnesses. His family called an ambulance for him from occupied Kakhovka. After some time, the Kakhovka hospital’s only ambulance did even arrive and collect the ill man. The problem was that the only hospitals that could provide the man with emergency treatment were in occupied Skadovsk, over 150 kilometres from the man’s village. He died, probably in pain, before they reached Skadovsk. According to Baturin, this is no isolated case, but “is the system which Russia brought to our land.”
It is a system of immense brutality, as one resident of Dnipriany discovered when her father became seriously unwell at around 9 p.m. on 16 April 2022. He was not a young man and had already suffered a stroke, with Russia’s full-scale invasion and its consequences depriving me of the supporting medication that he needed. His family rang for an ambulance only to be told that the hours of curfew had begun and that doctors would only be able to come in the morning. Her father did not survive the night.
Almost four years on, the situation has not improved, with only those who become unwell in the morning or afternoon (while it is light) having any chance of being able to get an ambulance.
Although occupied Kherson oblast is not being deliberately cut off from telecommunications and the Internet altogether, as have been some cities in occupied Luhansk oblast, cuts are frequent. This too means that it is often impossible to do anything but find a car which will, for a lot more money, transport the ill person to a doctor.
Nor are these problems only experienced by people in villages or village settlements. A resident of occupied Nova Kakhovka told CJI that there had been many cases where the ambulance brigades have flatly refused to come out while its dark, with this meaning that anybody who gets ill after around 4 p.m. in winter and their families can only pray that they survive until morning.
Nor is at all guaranteed that they will receive the needed medical care in Nova Kakhovka even during the day. CJI reported in late January 2023, citing their own sources in the city, that the Russian invaders had forcibly closed the Nova Kakhovka Central City Hospital. The medical staff had been positively banned from returning to work. They had tried to ignore this ban, understanding the gravity of leaving residents of the city without medical assistance, but were finally driven from the hospital on 27 January 2023 and forced to give up the keys to their offices. The Russians instead provided so-called ‘mobile brigades’ which, judging by the staff that CJI learned of, were unlikely to be able to provide people with “even minimally professional medical care.” There was still greater reason for concern as the Russian invaders had also removed all medical equipment from the hospital, including even the devices for sterilizing medical instruments.
This is evidently part of the invaders’ policy as two days earlier, CJI learned that the Central City Hospital in neighbouring Kakhovka had either discharged its patients or forcibly ‘evacuated’ them to other hospitals in occupied Kherson oblast. It was clear then that all residents of both Kakhovka and Nova Kakhovka would be sent for treatment to occupied Skadovsk, Novotroiitske or even Crimea. CJI was told by local medical workers that over the past months the Kakhovska Hospital had also served residents of Nova Kakhovka precisely because the latter hospital had been plundered and all medical equipment removed a little earlier. Now they had extended their plunder to Kakhovka, with no thought given to the people who were thus being deprived of local medical care. The staff from both the Kakhovska Central City Hospital and the Kakhovska City Centre for Primary Health Care (also forcibly closed) had refused to be ‘evacuated’, however patients were being sent to Skadovsk, Novotroiitske or even occupied Simferopol. This seems criminally irresponsible since, as CJI reported, there was no bus connection between these cities and you need a pass to get through the numerous Russian checkpoints along the way if you travel by car. Taxis do have the necessary permits to cross the checkpoints, but these are too expensive for many people. Kakhovska medics informed CJI that the Russians had been actively taking all equipment and furniture from the two city hospitals away. They also reported that the Russians had threatened to shell the hospital since the staff were not ‘agreeing to evacuate nicely’.
It would be difficult to find a more telling example of the aggressor state’s total disregard for the population of invaded territory than the plan it announced on 9 January 2023 to close seven hospitals in occupied Kherson oblast: those in Oleshky; Hola Prystan; Kakhovka; Nova Kakhovka; Verkhniy Rohachyk; Hornostaiivka and Velyka Lepetykha. It was claimed by the Russian-installed ‘health minister’, collaborator Vadym Ilmiyev that there would be mobile brigades and ambulance doctors – those same ambulances that will only attend patients who manage to fall ill during daylight hours.
There is also a critical shortage of medical staff with so many having left because of the invasion. According to Volodymyr Kovalenko, elected Mayor of Nova Kakhovka, the Russians tried to bring in medica staff from Russia, however these do not stay. For some time, he says, the invaders were unable to even ensure that basic analysis of blood tests were carried out, with this absolutely inconceivable before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kovalenko quotes a friend as saying that, at present, the most terrifying thing under Russian occupation, is to get ill.
On 26 November 2025, the Institute for the Study of War [ISW] wrote about “an increasingly catastrophic shortage of medical personnel in all parts of occupied Ukraine”. It said then that it had previously analysed the situation and found that the shortages were the result of Russian mismanagement of the healthcare system in occupied areas since 2022. At present, the only method that may result in more medical staff staying for a year at least on occupied territory would still only mean a greater number of “lower-quality, less-experienced medical personnel, and therefore may not be sufficient to fix the medical crisis in occupied areas”.
ISW states only that Russia “appears to be in violation of its obligations as an occupying power under the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” through its failure to ensure adequate medical supplies to occupied territory, although the violations go further. One of the reasons for the catastrophic situation, and for the deaths of many civilians is that Russia has plundered Ukrainian hospitals, with the equipment presumably either assigned to military hospitals or taken to Russia or occupied Crimea.
CJI spoke with Onysia Syniuk, a legal analyst for the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, who pointed to countless violations, including Russia’s refusal to provide healthcare unless people have Russian social security, with this forcing people to take Russian citizenship. An occupying regime is only allowed to requisition some medical equipment or other hospital property if there is an urgent need to treat wounded or sick soldiers. The property must be returned as soon as the need diminishes. The occupiers do not have the right to take away medical property and supplies which are needed by the civilian population with this very clearly what has happened on a major scale. “The occupying state does not have the right to give anyone preferential treatment or discriminate against anyone with respect to health care. For this reason, it is unacceptable to restrict access to medical personnel if a person does not have a Russian passport. All of this is a violation of the right to health which includes access to proper medical assistance and the right to freedom from inhuman treatment. In combination with the other violations that Russia is committing on occupied territory, this could also be qualified as a crime against humanity.”
