Bullet wounds have become unusual on the front line for Russian troops, while drones now account for the main threat, according to a military medic from the Vostok group of forces with the call sign Devyaty.

Speaking to RIA Novosti, he said he had not treated a gunshot wound for roughly a year and a half. Most of the cases reaching frontline medics now involve shrapnel injuries caused by drone strikes.

According to Devyaty, small fragments from UAVs are especially dangerous. They can cut into arteries, making blood loss extremely difficult to stop. He said the last case he remembered involving a bullet wound was around 2025, when he treated a serviceman injured in the clavicle during a small-arms firefight.

The same shift had earlier been described by a paramedic from the BARS-22 Tigr volunteer unit of the 55th Marine Division, which operates in the interests of the Tsentr group of forces. The medic, known by the call sign Suetolog, said in March that during almost a year of service she had not seen a single bullet wound.

In her account, combat injuries are now shaped mainly by drones. Shrapnel and mine-blast wounds dominate the medical picture, with only the size and shape of fragments changing from case to case. During her second contract, she said, wounds from small arms had not appeared in her practice at all.