Mobile hospital with ‘Terminator’ truck heading to Ukraine's frontline

Shielded with bullet-proof armour, the mobile field hospital undergoing final touches in Kyiv has drawn parallels with dystopian films such as Mad Max and Terminator.

The fleet includes an extraction vehicle nicknamed 'The Beast' and a repurposed bus resembling a SWAT vehicle.

The steel-clad complex is due to head to Ukraine's eastern frontline through a private initiative crowdfunded by Radu Hossu, a prolific Romanian supporter of the country who has joined forces with two Ukrainians, a soldier and a paramedic.

Radu named the ingenious project in honour of Oleg Gubal, a respected soldier he made friends with on the frontline who died resisting Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion.

The Romanian, originally from Brasov, Transylvania, wants others in the line of Russian fire to receive a faster life-saving response than the man he regards as a ‘true hero’.

Cloaked in NATO-standard armour, the three main vehicles can withstand mine blasts and are accompanied by a high speed boat to bring casualties across water if necessary.

Radu told Metro.co.uk: ‘It is important to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians because we, the collective West, believe that every life counts.

‘Ukrainians did not ask for this war, Oleg's family did not ask for this war.

'They are from Uzhhorod in the extreme west of Ukraine, five minutes away from Slovakia, and Oleg died two kilometres away from the Russian border in the extreme east of Ukraine.

‘It's important to save as many lives as we can so people can be whole again. Behind each death, there are real-life stories with real-life people.

'Most of them are normal people, with regular jobs before the war.

'It is important to save their lives.’

Radu was working as a political consultant in Romania when he began writing nightly summaries of the war on Facebook after the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24 last year.

In July, a Ukrainian-Romanian soldier with the callsign ‘Rum’ told him how much he respected the updates and the two became friends.

Radu, 36, began crowdfunding for Ukrainian causes from his growing number of Facebook followers and he visited the country for the first time last September as an accredited war correspondent.

The country's biggest private Romanian donor has since provided around 130,000 euros (£113,000) for the mobile hospital fund and expects to raise another 150,000 euros before it closes this week or next.

Overall, he has raised 573,000 euros for Ukraine since August 2022.

Radu witnessed the vital need for such support first-hand when Rum took him to the frontline in the northern Kharkiv region and introduced him to Oleg, a father of two respected for his sound judgement.

‘We lived together under daily shelling, eating from the same plate, living in the same trench, in the same room when in the safe house,’ he said.

‘He was like a guardian angel to me. I was always oversleeping when the Russians started to bomb us, and Oleg always woke me up and told me to take shelter and to go and eat, saying I was too skinny.

'He was a special guy, with a great sense of humour.

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‘He had worked in the judicial system before volunteering to fight in the war and he has a nice family who mourns him.

'Since he was older and wise, everybody listened to him.

‘At the same time, he respected the chain of command.’

Oleg died in eastern Ukraine after a pick-up truck he was travelling in crossed an anti-personnel mine installed on top of an anti-tank mine, which is illegal under the Geneva Convention.

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The nearest hospital not damaged by Russian forces was 1.5 miles away and he did not make it in time.

As far as Radu is aware, his friend would only have had a slim chance of surviving even if there had been a fully functioning hospital nearby at the time of the blast last November.

Oleg's son, then aged 8, sent letters to Father Christmas after the family found out about his death, asking him to bring his dad home.

He wrote almost every day up until Christmas Day as his teenage sister and mum were overcome with grief.

While it is too late for Oleg, Radu now wants to make sure other Ukrainian soldiers receive help from medics in blast-proof vehicles in the crucial minutes after they are wounded.

‘I wanted to make this kid realize that his father, who meant so much to me in those hard times under constant shelling, was a true hero,’ he said.

‘I wanted to transform a tragedy into something that would save lives.

'That's when I told Rum to call Angel, the callsign of a paramedic who had the concept in his head for a mobile medical bus, and told him I would fund his project with Romanian money donated to my personal account on one condition — it had to be named Oleg Gubal.’

The mobile stabilisation point has three main vehicles armoured to NATO standards, including a bus sourced from Poland which will be used as a life-saving emergency medical room by surgeons.

The idea is that the steel and Kevlar-clad vehicle will be sited between 15 and 20km from the frontline, with volunteer medics from Ukraine and Poland who specialise in combat trauma working shifts around the clock.

Another component has been adapted from an American Peterbilt unit, similar to the type of truck used in Terminator 2, to house four beds for doctors to rest and two more in the driver's cabin.

The logistics machine also houses a kitchen, shower and storage space for generators, a spare fuel tank, a refrigerated blood bank and a room for sanitising medical equipment.

An extraction vehicle nicknamed 'The Beast' has been fashioned from an eight-cylinder Ford-150 mounted on the chassis of a Soviet GAZ truck with modified suspension and giant wheels for hard terrain.

The triple-armoured ‘Frankenstein’ machine is designed to evacuate casualties from the contact area and transport them to the stabilisation point. Three ambulances in the complex will then drive the wounded to the nearest hospital for further care.

The emergency department on wheels is nearing completion at a custom car company in Kyiv, which has only charged for labour costs.

‘The extraction vehicle will go exactly to the spot,’ Radu said.

‘That means 50 metres away from the combat area.

'Zero meters away if needed.’

Radu joked that Angel is Q in the story while Rum is James Bond, as he manages the project through his Autorota charity.

‘So in this story, that would make me the UK government which funds Q's ideas while Bond gets to work,’ he said.

‘I would like to thank the Romanians whose donations have made this unique project possible and to Rum for managing the project.

'He has sacrificed his family time away from the frontline to make sure the hospital is finished as soon as possible to save Ukrainian lives.’

The Oleg Gubal Mobile Hospital is 95% complete and due to leave Kyiv this week or next with the most likely destination being eastern Ukraine.

For more information visit Radu's Facebook page

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