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Ukrainian intelligence is warning that a Russian Lancet drone is prowling the sky, loitering above Kramatorsk, like a heron poised over a fish pond, ready to strike.

A laptop shows multiscreen images of medics racing through shredded forest, Russian soldiers in Ukrainian sights, bunkers being blown up – everyday terror.

This is the future of war – and the West isn’t ready for what may be coming in an open conflict with Russia: mass casualties and a transformation of the battle beyond anything that Nato’s armies are training for.

The laptop feed is for Rebekah Maciorowski, an American volunteer paramedic who runs the medical operations, evacuation and training for an entire battalion of men and women on Ukraine’s eastern front, under its 3rd Brigade. In a conventional war, she would be a major. In this conflict? She has no idea what her rank is and cares even less.

But the revelations from this frontline soldier, one who has the rare claim to have shot down an incoming Russian drone attacking her patients, are chilling.

open image in gallery Rebekah Maciorowski has undergone training with Nato forces in the last year and says what they taught was relevant to Afghanistan