COMMENTARY: In Zaporizhzhia, Russian drones hit the ambulances the next strike will need

Ambulances drive toward the blast

Zaporizhzhia, at dawn on the 25th

An ambulance goes.

That is its whole job. It waits, engine off, and when the city hears the explosion, it heads toward the noise while everyone else runs the other way.

At dawn on September 25, 2026, Russian drones struck Zaporizhzhia, according to Ivan Fedorov, co-chair of the regional Defense Council. A medical center building was damaged. There was destruction. A fire broke out.

Elsewhere in the city, windows blew out in an apartment building. Buildings and vehicles in a garage cooperative were hit. Glass crunches underfoot on mornings like that one.

A front-line city learns these sounds. The engine. The blast. The silence right after.

The second facility

Then the regional military administration posted another message. A second medical facility in the city had been hit in the same morning attack.

Premises damaged. Ambulances damaged. Civilian cars too.

No one hurt at that address, according to the administration.

That morning, the ambulances did not have to head toward the noise. The noise came to them.

The ambulance did not arrive after the strike. It was in it.

Five or seven

The administration’s count

The morning’s numbers don’t line up. I give them all, each with its source.

The regional military administration writes that five people were evacuated from the facility that was hit. It reports one man lightly injured.

Ivan Fedorov says the same. One injured. Light injuries.

Ukrinform, the national news agency, carries his version. A medical center damaged, then on fire. Ambulances hit. No one hurt on that side.

Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of the regional military administration, sums up the morning in three beats: the Russian army attacked the city, sites were hit, a fire broke out in one of the medical facilities.

The emergency service’s count

The State Emergency Service counts differently. According to the service, as relayed by Ukrainska Pravda, rescuers evacuated seven patients from the upper floors along with staff, among them people with limited mobility. They put out the fire in one of the wards.

Later that morning, the same service raised the number of injured to two, the local news portal Akzent reports.

A number that goes up is not necessarily a lie. Often it is just a morning moving on.

Five or seven. One or two.

I don’t pick the heavier one. I don’t average them. The range is the fact, and it comes from two Ukrainian institutions.

And yet no version changes the rest. Two care facilities hit. A ward on fire. Ambulances damaged. No one dead.

Five or seven, the ward burned all the same.

The next casualty

Eight days after the 17th

I’ll say it right away, because everything else depends on it.

I stand with the patients carried down from the upper floors, and with the crews who carry them.

I stand against the Russian command’s decision to send its drones against Ukrainian cities on the night of September 24 to 25. Ukraine’s air force counted 295.

Because at dawn on the 25th, in Zaporizhzhia, Russian drones hit two care facilities and ambulances. Eight days after an FPV drone wounded a paramedic and a driver in the same city.

What the strike takes away

A damaged building is visible. People photograph it. They count the windows.

A damaged ambulance is not visible the same day. It would show at the next strike, when the call comes in and the vehicle is in the shop.

A building can be repaired. So can an ambulance. But not between two air-raid alerts.

Hitting the ambulance means hitting the next casualty.

The one who has no name yet. The one still asleep this morning, somewhere in Zaporizhzhia, who does not know they will be the next call.

They struck the rescue before the call.

295 drones in one night

The air force’s count

The night’s count comes from Ukraine’s air force, published on the morning of the 25th.

The attack began on September 24 at 6 p.m. It involved 295 drones. Attack drones: Shaheds, 52 of them jet-powered, Gerberas, decoys.

Launched from Orel, Kursk, Millerovo, Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Shatalovo, in Russia, and from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Crimea.

267 were shot down or jammed, according to the same source. Hits at 16 sites. Debris fell on four others.

The 52 jet-powered drones are harder to intercept, the Kyiv Independent notes. The count says where the drones came down. It does not say what they prevented the next day.

Eight regions in one message

During the morning, Volodymyr Zelensky wrote that eight regions had been attacked since the start of the day. In the same message, he named Zaporizhzhia: a clinic hit while people were inside.

Eight regions. One line for Zaporizhzhia.

267 out of 295. Roughly nine in 10. That is a good defense rate.

And yet a rate does not protect an address. The national tally reads as a percentage. A ward on fire does not. It reads as patients who have to be carried out.

Nine in 10 brought down. The rest find an address.

11 ambulances since January

Fedorov’s second message

Less than an hour after his first message of the morning, Ivan Fedorov posted a second one. Shorter. Heavier.

The enemy has once again struck those who arrive first, he writes. This time, a medical facility in Zaporizhzhia.

Then he gives his tally. Since the start of the year, 11 ambulances have been attacked. Six other attacks targeted emergency medical substations or their immediate surroundings.

In the hospitals, he adds, 42 people wounded in the shelling remain hospitalized. Twelve are in serious condition. Among them, a 16-year-old girl.

He does not say how many vehicles are still in service. He does not say how many have been repaired. The tally stops at the blows taken.

September 17

On September 17, an FPV drone hit an ambulance in Zaporizhzhia. A paramedic and the driver were wounded, according to Mykhailo Semikin, quoted by Interfax-Ukraine.

FPV stands for first-person view. Whoever flies it sees what the camera sees, all the way in.

On the 17th, the crew. On the 25th, the vehicle.

First the people who drive. Then what they drive.

How many ambulances have to be hit before we stop calling it an accident?

We no longer count ambulances that leave. We count the ones hit.

What the WHO counted

More than 3,000

The World Health Organization keeps a register, its surveillance system for attacks on health care. It verifies each case before logging it.

On May 8, 2026, its Europe office announced more than 3,000 attacks on health care in Ukraine verified since the full-scale invasion. In 1,534 days of war.

For 2026 alone, as of that date, 186 attacks verified had left 15 dead and at least 81 injured.

About 20% of recorded attacks hit ambulances and other health vehicles, the WHO writes. Nearly one in three causes casualties.

Nearly 80% of verified attacks hit clinics, hospitals and other care facilities, according to the same source.

Three thousand. The number is verified. It is also running behind.

What the total leaves out

The May tally describes a country. It does not say how many of those attacks hit Zaporizhzhia.

And the city, inside that total?

September 25 is not in it yet. It will have to be verified, classified, counted. The register is slow because it is serious.

Behind every line in the register, there is an address, a time, a crew.

One attack in five against a care vehicle. That number does not look like a random spray of debris.

The register sees a country. It does not yet see the street.

A downed drone falls where it falls

267 out of 295, and debris

I know the strongest argument against me. It deserves better than an adjective.

Here it is, in the form the other side would sign. That night, 267 drones out of 295 were shot down or jammed, according to the air force. A downed drone falls where it falls. A hospital hit is not a hospital targeted.

No public document, on the 25th, proves intent. The official messages speak only of damage.

Two addresses, 11 ambulances

Here is what turns it around.

It is not one facility. It is two, the same morning, in the same city, according to the regional administration.

It is not a building alone. It is ambulances too.

It is not a first morning. On September 17, an FPV drone, guided by an eye behind a camera, was already hitting an ambulance.

It is not a one-off this year. Eleven ambulances since January, and six attacks near the substations, according to Ivan Fedorov.

It is not a city apart. One attack in five, in the WHO register, targets a care vehicle.

Debris does not come back 11 times.

The argument held for one morning. It does not hold for a year.

Debris falls once. A method comes back.

No deaths, and I say so

Five, seven, one, two

Now the fact that makes my own camp uncomfortable. I publish it anyway, in its proper place.

I don’t hide it. I don’t bury it at the bottom of the text.

No one died in Zaporizhzhia this morning. One lightly injured, according to the administration. Two, according to the emergency service.

And the Ukrainian authorities do not say the same thing. Five evacuated for one. Seven patients for the other. A clinic for the president. Medical facilities for the administration.

The official messages do not name the two facilities. Outside Zaporizhzhia, no one can independently verify what burned, or how many ambulances were hit.

A skeptical reader has the right to stop there. It is a real fact. It carries weight.

A fire put out in time

That is true. And it does not change this: no version gives an ambulance back to the city.

Five or seven, patients were brought out of a building where a ward was burning. One or two, the injured were treated by a system that was being hit that same morning.

The absence of deaths is no proof of restraint. It has other names: a fire put out fast, floors emptied in time, crews who ran.

No deaths is luck. Not an excuse.

The ones who cannot walk

People with limited mobility

In the emergency service’s count, one detail stops me. Among the patients evacuated, people with limited mobility.

They cannot run to the shelter. They cannot take the stairs alone. They cannot get up when the alarm sounds. They cannot wait for the smoke to clear. They cannot do anything but hold out their arms.

Someone carries them.

An alarm. Footsteps. A voice counting the stairs. The fire counts nothing. It climbs.

A floor, for them, is not a distance. It is a person lifting you. A cold railing under a hand that is not yours. One step, then another, down a hallway that smells of smoke.

A person with limited mobility does not flee a strike. They wait for someone to come. That is the whole difference between a patient and a passerby.

The other half of the trip

Getting off the upper floors is half the trip. The other half is the ambulance.

And that morning, at the other facility, ambulances had been damaged.

I am not saying those patients were waiting for those vehicles. Nothing says so. I am saying the trip has two halves, and the same attack hit both.

Half the trip was carried by hand. The other half had been hit.

Relieved, then ashamed

The first line I looked for

I admit it. Reading the first messages, I looked for one line before all the others. The death toll.

There wasn’t one. I breathed.

Then I was ashamed of breathing so fast.

Shame is not a big word. It is the right word.

Because that relief is exactly what lets the strike through. A morning without deaths makes no headline in the West. It falls below the threshold, and what falls below the threshold happens again.

Every reader knows that relief. There is nothing guilty about it. It only has a cost.

The sentence that reassures

No one injured, the administration says of the second facility. That is true. It reassures. The damaged ambulances are in the same sentence.

I don’t know how long it takes to repair an ambulance in Zaporizhzhia. I don’t know whether it goes back out tomorrow or in a month. I don’t know who will answer the next call if it doesn’t.

I only know that the reassuring sentence does not count the vehicles.

No one hurt this morning. The bill comes due at the next strike.

A week in Zaporizhzhia

From September 17 to 25

There was September 17. An FPV drone on an ambulance, a paramedic and a driver wounded, according to the administration. The same day, a strike on the Amstor shopping center, Ukrainska Pravda recalls.

There was September 21. Two apartment towers, a university building, the Intrade shopping center. At least six injured by morning, according to the administration, quoted by Ukrainska Pravda.

There was September 23. 690 strikes on 55 localities in the region, and six injured, according to Ivan Fedorov, as carried by Ukrinform.

There was the 25th. Two care facilities. Ambulances.

Four dates in nine days. One city. The same crews answering each one.

What comes after

This is a city that no longer counts the days between strikes. It counts what is left to respond with.

The target changes. The shopping center, the university, the towers, the clinic. What does not change is what arrives next: the rescuers, the doctors, the ambulances.

The list of targets grows longer. The list of responders does not.

Hitting what arrives next makes every strike to come last longer.

Every strike lasts longer when the ambulance is missing.

A line at the bottom of the tally

The Western threshold

Here is what we accept, without ever having decided to.

That a strike without deaths is not news. That a damaged care facility fits in one line at the bottom of a national tally. That a hit ambulance becomes property damage, somewhere between a garage and a window.

We read the word medical in a statement, and the temperature no longer changes.

It is not indifference. It is wear. The result is the same for the person waiting.

We never voted for it. We let it settle in.

The word hospital should stop us reading. It barely slows us down.

The rule already written

The WHO put it bluntly, through Hans Kluge, its regional director for Europe: “Every one of these attacks is a violation of international humanitarian law.” Each one, he adds, represents “a patient who couldn’t be reached.”

A patient who couldn’t be reached. That is the exact definition of an ambulance hit.

And yet a written rule does not repair a vehicle. It does not replace an injured driver. It waits for someone to enforce it.

The law wrote the rule. The drone did not read it.

One ambulance fewer, one more call

A building, ambulances, a fire

Here is my conclusion, and it holds without a single death.

On September 25, in Zaporizhzhia, Russian drones did not only hit a care building. They hit what lets a city respond to the next strike: a second facility, ambulances, rescuers tied up fighting a fire.

Eleven ambulances since January, according to Ivan Fedorov. A paramedic and a driver wounded on the 17th. Ambulances damaged on the 25th.

This is not a strike without victims. It is a strike whose victims have not called yet.

This text does not ask anyone to count louder. It asks for an accurate count, vehicles included.

The next alert

We read no deaths, and we moved on.

Since when does a strike on two care facilities pass for good news, simply because it cost no lives?

The next alert will sound in Zaporizhzhia. Someone will call. Someone will pick up. And a vehicle will be needed to go, if there is still one in the right place…

The next strike already has its next casualty. Not its ambulance.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration — second facility, ambulances and civilian cars damaged, September 25, 2026
• Ivan Fedorov, Zaporizhzhia Defense Council — 11 ambulances attacked since January, September 25, 2026
• WHO Europe — more than 3,000 verified attacks on health care in Ukraine, May 8, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Ukrainska Pravda — two medical facilities hit, seven patients evacuated, September 25, 2026
• The Kyiv Independent — 295 drones overnight, two injured in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, September 25, 2026
• Interfax-Ukraine — ambulance hit by an FPV drone in Zaporizhzhia, September 17, 2026