Media about the Ministry of Internal Affairs: how police aircraft evacuate wounded soldiers
Since April 2022, civilian police aviation has also been engaged in the evacuation of wounded servicemen. In almost two years, pilots of the National Police saved more than 2.5 thousand lives. In December 2023, the Public recorded a conversation with several pilots and tells how police aviation works and how at the beginning of the invasion it managed to bring helicopters out of the shelling.
Helicopters prepare for flight in a closed hangar of aircraft equipment to the background music. Inspect cars, refuel, check electronics. Every helicopter, mechanics explain, is a transformer. Additional seats — passenger board, without them — transport. And in order to turn the helicopter into a medical one, it is equipped with oxygen cylinders, carriers and a medical module - a panel on which medical equipment is attached.
“On board there is an artificial lung ventilation device, a defibrillator sensor, a suction device. We can conduct cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the air. We have devices that allow you to inject the liquid in the right amount and at the right time, to put the dropper”, — the doctor of aviation medicine Yuriy assures that such a helicopter is not inferior to fast medical equipment.
These Airbus H145 helicopters of Franco-German production are among those that arrived in Ukraine in October 2020. Then they were handed over to the Bureau of Aviation and Police on the water. From 2021 until the start of the full-scale invasion, they transported “heavy” patients to medical facilities or transported human organs or blood.
On February 24, 2022, nine out of ten such helicopters were in Kyiv region. The leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to withdraw the sides from the impact.
“On February 25, four helicopters departed from Kyiv, another five from Kyiv region. We moved as low as possible, because there was already enemy aircraft on top. As they say in our pilots: “weeds were collected on skis.” They hid in the field, lived there for three days, resolved the issue with foreign colleagues about whether it was possible to throw helicopters behind the “fence”. A whole story!”, — says the head of the Aviation Support Center of the National Police Oleksandr Taran.
After the liberation of the Kiev region, the helicopters returned to Ukraine and, by the decision of the General Staff, the air police were involved in various tasks.
“It's not just about transporting the wounded. There is also the delivery of doctors, if you urgently need to operate on the spot, and the delivery of blood plasma,” says Taran.
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Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
