By Olha Hembik | 2025-07-25

In Ukraine's bloodied front-line trenches, Polish combat medics have learned how to stop arterial bleeding with a belt, how to stabilize a wounded soldier under fire and how to survive the chaos of drone warfare. Now they are bringing that knowledge home.

By early September, the W międzyczasie ("In the Meantime") Foundation plans to open a tactical medical training center outside Warsaw. The goal: to prepare Polish troops and civilians for the possibility of war.

The new center is designed to share hard-earned knowledge from more than a decade of work in Ukraine's combat zones, Damian Duda, a paramedic and director of the organization, told public broadcaster Polskie Radio in June.

Duda and his team of Polish medics have served on the front since 2014, providing care in some of the most dangerous zones, including Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv and Kherson provinces and in Donbas. They are operating in Donetsk province now.

Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the rest of the country in 2022.

"[The center] will be a place for sharing experience, as well as a space where we will train our doctors and volunteers who will go to the front," Duda told Kontur.

The facility will feature a tactical medical training ground equipped to teach Tactical Combat Casualty Care and first aid under battlefield conditions. It will include a recovery and therapeutic wing for medics facing the psychological toll of war.

The center will support frontline medical workers and their families, said Duda. The foundation aims to raise 500,000 PLN (about €117,400) to fund the initiative.

Danger from the East

Europeans are turning to Ukrainians for lessons in wartime readiness, said Piotr Kaszuwara, an experienced war correspondent and founder of the UA Future foundation.

Kaszuwara, who has covered the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2016, has helped evacuate civilians and deliver aid to front-line communities since Russia's full-scale invasion began. His foundation often operates in dangerous conditions.

Before the war, he trained in combat first aid at a Polish center for foreign correspondents in Kielce, where he learned basic battlefield techniques --tourniquet use, wound dressing, bleeding control -- that now guide his team's work in Ukraine.

"Now I'm very glad that I previously completed the combat first aid courses," he told Kontur.

Even minimal medical training boosts confidence during humanitarian missions, he said. Ukraine's early lack of preparation may have cost lives, he added.

When "the first wounded arrived, not everyone knew how to help them," he said.

Speaking from Kyiv as a siren blared, he added that if an attack happened, he would know what to do instinctively.

"It would be better not to need this knowledge," he said, "but it's good to have it, so as not to be completely unarmed and caught off guard."

Another war

W międzyczasie no longer views the war in Ukraine as a distant expeditionary conflict like those in Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead, it aims to help Europeans prepare for full-scale war. One of its key goals is to transfer hard-won Ukrainian battlefield experience to Poland.

"The very idea [of opening the center] arose from the fact that we did not notice Ukraine's experience being transferred to Poland. That's why we took on this mission," Duda said.

The new center near Warsaw will also train Polish security forces and officials, and Polish soldiers have shown strong interest in his combat experience, he said.

Russian orthopedic and trauma surgeon Andrei Volna, who obtained political asylum in Estonia, echoed the idea that Ukraine's war is unlike previous armed conflicts. Volna has taught about 15 military courses in Ukraine and led joint trainings with Ukrainian doctors.

The nature of battlefield injuries has changed significantly, especially with rising drone attacks and shelling, he told Kontur. His team now focuses on saving limbs, often using BONALIVE bone substitutes and the patient's own tissue to repair severe damage.

"Fighting bone infection and filling bone and soft tissue defects will remain relevant in peacetime," Volna said.

A long-term initiative

Residents along Poland's border with Ukraine hope the war stays contained, but many remain uneasy.

"We have hope that the war will never reach Poland, but we are not 100% sure," said Kaszuwara.

As W międzyczasie builds its new training center near Warsaw, Kaszuwara urges Poles to study tactical medical care and update their emergency skills.

"It's good that the center will open and will be managed by someone [Duda] with experience from the war in Ukraine, which changed many things," he said.

Better public preparedness could deter aggression, said Kaszuwara.

"The more knowledge we gain, the better prepared we will be," he said. "If you want peace, prepare for war."

The foundation sees the center as a long-term project. Duda said it will continue offering training and crisis response support even after the war ends, serving as "a unit that will save [lives] in crises."