Bila Tserkva’s No2 hospital was emptied of patients and its cold-war-era bomb shelter filled with beds to prepare for the horror its doctors have watched overwhelm medics in other cities. The few dozen patients they have taken in since war broke out are harbingers of the storm to come.
One lost an eye to an explosion as he chatted with friends. Another faces months of recovery after a sniper bullet shattered his thigh bone. A third interviewed by the Observer was so badly wounded by a shell that forming a short sentence leaves him breathless with exhaustion.
