During the night of December 4, while Russian forces carried out a major aerial attack on Sloviansk, a city near the front line of the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine, a blast was felt just feet from the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff house.
The explosion seriously damaged the building, two MSF vehicles, and an ambulance of our partner organization, Cadus. Thankfully, our colleagues were already in a shelter space and no one was injured.
“The explosion shattered all the windows,” said Enrique Garcia Quiroz, MSF project coordinator. “From the shelter we saw a fire spreading to nearby homes. Families stood outside with their children as firefighters tried to contain the flames.”
MSF has worked in Sloviansk since November 2022, supporting emergency and planned medical referrals of patients from frontline hospitals to specialized facilities. Our mobile clinics based out of Sloviansk have provided over 3,990 primary health consultations.
“Our neighbors were a family with children, a beekeeper, the home of the cook for our staff houses, and several staff houses of other NGOs,” said Robin Meldrum, MSF country coordinator for Ukraine. “This bomb landed on a civilian area. Whether this attack was targeted or indiscriminate, this is unacceptable and we denounce it in the strongest terms.”
MSF's base in Sloviansk was damaged when the city came under Russian attack on December 4. Two MSF cars were damaged, and windows two houses of the base were blown in. Ukraine 2025 © MSF
MSF has seen a stark increase in patients injured near the front line in recent months. From September to November of this year, MSF teams received 221 patients with war-related injuries in hospitals near the front line—an increase of 45 percent compared to the three previous months.
With the front line shifting rapidly, hostilities becoming more unpredictable, and damage to civilian and medical structures now a regular occurrence, Sloviansk is now too dangerous to be a permanent base for our staff. Nevertheless, we aim to continue ambulance referrals and primary health consultations in the area, working from an alternative base nearby.
Working on the front lines in Ukraine
MSF continues to support hospitals close to the front lines in Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions, where the need for emergency medical care following missile and drone attacks remains high.
Our teams refurbished hospitals in Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk regions in 2022, enabling them to keep functioning even as the war advanced. Today, many of those hospitals are damaged, destroyed, or abandoned. Over the past five months, hospitals in cities such as Kostiantynivka, Mezhova, and Sviatohirsk have ceased to operate. Since 2022, MSF teams have been forced to leave six hospitals and ambulance bases, and to withdraw from a number of mobile clinic locations due to proximity or direct strikes from shelling and bombardments.
