The video is only about a second long but shows the killing of American volunteer medic Pete Reed and a Ukrainian woman he was treating in Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine that has been the target of a bloody Russian attack for months.
When viewed frame by frame, the footage is revealing.
A low-flying missile can be seen heading toward Reed’s white ambulance that was parked at the scene.
The images show that Reed was not killed by Russian shelling, as eyewitnesses had previously assumed.
Military experts say the missile seen in the footage bears all the hallmarks of a laser-guided anti-tank missile. Reed’s colleagues say the video, along with first-hand testimony, shows the group of international medics was deliberately targeted.
“They were chasing us,” said Erko Laidinen, a 35-year-old Estonian medic whose camera recorded the missile and explosion.
Erko Laidinen, a 35-year-old Estonian medic, and his team are in Ukraine helping victims of the war with Russia. Laidinen can be seen at vehicle.frontlinedoctors.org
When Laidinen’s medical team arrived on the scene on February 2 to treat a Ukrainian woman who had been injured by gunfire, another team led by Reed was already there.
Less than 10 seconds later, the missile hit Reed’s white van.
At that moment, Laidinen was still in his team’s ambulance, which he said was clearly marked with large medical-style crosses and was parked not far away.
The Estonian paramedic had turned on his camera a second before the explosion. Reeds are clearly visible.
He stands next to his ambulance, next to his colleagues. Next to him was the woman he wanted to treat.
Then a low-flying missile shoots in from right to left. ABC News viewed and verified the video.
“Those were the worst two seconds of my life,” Laidinen described the moment after the explosion.
Then he heard one of his team members scream.
“I was relieved,” he recalled. “It wasn’t pretty, but you could check if (his colleague) was alive.”
Laidinen said he and his seriously injured colleagues quickly took cover in a building. He believes that the team of international medics was repeatedly attacked by Russian forces even after the initial missile attack.
His camera had crashed to the ground in the first explosion as Laidinen got out of his vehicle for cover.
The camera image is black for the next 20 minutes; However, several nearby explosions were still recorded, which Laidinen believes were incoming Russian mortars.
Laidinen said he has additional dashcam footage that captures both the missile hitting Reed’s ambulance and a second missile being fired at a vehicle used to evacuate victims from the scene.
That second missile, he said, missed its target, hitting a nearby apartment building.
Estonian medic Erko Laidinen captured footage of an explosion that killed US medic Pete Reed on February 2 in the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine. frontlinedoctors.org
The dashcam video has not yet been released, but Laidinen said it has been turned over to Ukrainian police and the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, as well as Estonian and US authorities.
“The missile’s low, flat trajectory” and the fact that it was slow enough to be caught on video, suggest it was a anti-tank guided missile acted. Ganyard looked at the pictures.
Laidinen said it was apparent that the team were international volunteer medics working on site.
The cross on the back of Reed’s ambulance was covered in dirt, but crosses were visible on the side and front of that van and on all sides of Laidinen’s vehicle, he said.
As the video shows, Reed’s team wore civilian clothes. Laidinen said one team member was wearing a camouflage jacket.
It took Laidinen two days to get his phone and watch the video.
It then made clear “how dangerous it is” for a volunteer working near the front lines in Ukraine, he said.
“You can easily identify the missile in the picture,” he said.
There is no question that they were “targeted” on purpose, Laidinen emphasized.
“It’s laser controlled. There’s nothing to debate,” he said.
Laidinen said the Russian military knew a team of medics was on the scene responding to a civilian casualty.
“They have been waiting for us. They knew we were coming, that we were reacting,” he said. “It was a trap.”