Eastern Ukraine
CNN
—
As Simon Johnsen regained consciousness in the cloud of smoke, he heard a loud whistle in his ear. He checked if all parts of his body were still there.
Beside him, fellow medic Pete Reed was dead. So did the civilian Ukrainian women they came to treat their injuries.
On Thursday, February 2, in Bakhmut, Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, a Russian missile hit very close to where the two men were trying to deliver aid.
Johnsen, a medic from Norway, and a group of other volunteers had arrived on the scene only moments earlier.
They described the attack to CNN as a prime example of Russia using the so-called “double tap” to target medical workers and frontline helpers. .
Video footage of the scene shown to CNN shows an incoming missile hitting Reid’s team’s makeshift ambulance.
![Two stills taken from mobile phone footage show the moments before and after the ambulance was hit with the missile. The first image shows a missile passing a burnt-out vehicle. The second shows its impact.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230214121045-07-medics-bombed-in-ukraine.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill)
An ammunition expert examined the video and identified the weapon as an anti-tank guided missile, Reid’s wife, Alex Kay Potter, told CNN after returning from Ukraine.
Potter believes the attack on aid workers was intentional by the Russian military, and says their ambulance was clearly marked.
“The artillery wasn’t just randomly double tapping, they were being tracked,” she says. “They were highly targeted.”
Despite numerous strikes against medical workers and facilities over the course of the war, Russia has denied intentionally targeting civilians. The Defense Department did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
A former U.S. Marine, Reid came to the scene through the medical assistance group Global Outreach Doctors.
Johnsen and another colleague from Norway, Sander Thorsveen Trevik, went to Ukraine as volunteers for another humanitarian organization. frontline medicBoth were injured in the blast but survived.
“It was a normal day in Bahmut,” says Johnsen after fleeing to Norway. His team had arrived early in the morning and had a mobile clinic providing free testing and medication.
He says there were fires going in and out, but not “much hotter” than usual.
With some of the fiercest fighting taking place in the streets of Bakhmut since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, and hundreds of lives lost each day in fighting, soldiers on both sides of the Bakhmut is called a “meat grinder”.
![Pete Reed, pictured in the undated photo, was killed in the attack.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230203223735-01-pete-reed-medic-death-ukr.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill)
The team was sitting over coffee with fellow volunteers when they received an urgent call for help. “We went there in our car and Pete’s team went in his car,” Johnsen says.
It was very quiet when they entered the street, but they soon noticed that two cars had burned down. The injured woman’s car was wrecked and her husband was holding her head.
Johnsen says he doesn’t know what happened to her because he didn’t have time to gather information. She said, “I was just sitting with her patient…I was just about to check on her and we were beaten.”
Reed and his team, as well as Johnsen and Trevik, were next to the injured woman when the attack occurred.
Immediately after the explosion, Johnsen and Trevik ran for cover as mortar fire approached. They were followed by Emanuele Satori and his team, a photographer assigned to The Wall Street Journal.
The group tried to hide inside the house, but the door was locked.
![Johnsen suffered a head injury from the artillery fire. He lost hearing in his right ear and his left ear was also damaged.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230213180546-02-medics-bombed-in-ukraine.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill)
![Johnsen and Sander Sausvin Trevik left for Ukraine as volunteers. Both were injured in the blast, but survived.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230213180551-06-medics-bombed-in-ukraine.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill)
Even shivering, Johnsen remembered realizing that his injuries were not that serious.
Satori remembers asking the Norwegian if he needed help escaping. “We stayed in the courtyard and the guards said, ‘You have to go.’ So we asked two paramedics if they would come with us, and they said yes,” he said. Satori recalls.
The group began moving towards Satori’s car. In the confusion, however, Trevik took a wrong turn and turned back to the blast site.
Photos taken by Satori showed Trevik walking into the car, bloody and wide-eyed, with his trousers ragged.
“We were waiting for him in the car and Simon[Johnsen]started yelling ‘come here, come here’ and that’s when I took the picture,” said Satori. says.
He now looks at this photo and says he “feels so sorry” for Trevik.
“He was a young man and he was doing volunteer work. Satori told CNN from Turkey.
Elko Leididen, another volunteer from Estonia’s frontline medical corps, captured the missile explosion on his mobile phone.
He told CNN he was sitting in a front-line medic’s car and filming the team on his phone from the car window when the missile hit.
In the attack, his mobile phone was thrown out of the car, but continued to record the sound of gunfire for the next 20 minutes. He jumped out of the car unharmed and hid behind a tree while waiting for the smoke to clear, thinking his car was next.
Leidinen was separated from the others and ended up in a five-story apartment in search of shelter. When there was a two-minute pause, he fled away from the scene of the explosion and deep into Bahmut, the host of the street-to-street fighting.
![Erko Leidinen told CNN that he was sitting in a front-line medic's car when the missile hit him, filming the team on his phone from the car window.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230213180551-05-medics-bombed-in-ukraine.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_270,w_480,c_fill)
He found a house with a chimney and ran. The door was open, so he crawled into the basement for about half an hour to catch his breath.
Leidinen knew he needed access to the internet by visiting his team’s hub to let people know he was alive. He asked a local to take him to the Ukrainian military. Fortunately, according to Erko, the commander spoke English.
The military drove him to Habu, he said. That’s when he learned that his fellow frontline medic colleague had been evacuated by Satori’s team.
By this time it was about 4:00 pm local time in Bahmut and it was starting to get dark. Driving in Bakhmut at night means driving with the lights off or risking being attacked by the Russians.
Luckily for Leidinen, a Kiev-based group came to the hub to get what he had forgotten and offer him a lift out of the besieged city.
Johnsen and Trevik have returned to Norway for further treatment.
Trelvik had burn and shrapnel wounds to his body and both legs and arms.
Johnsen suffered a head injury. He lost hearing in his right ear and his left ear was also damaged.
Still, Johnsen said he is confident he will return to Ukraine as soon as he feels better.
“I am not stupid, I know the risks. Yes, it was a close call. I could have lost my life and everything. But Ukraine still needs a lot of work and help. ’ he says.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the date of the Bahmut missile attack. It was February 2nd.