Russia plans to expand its network of hospitals near the Baltic states
In the fall of 2026, the Russian Federation intends to make an additional 16,000–20,000 hospital beds available in civilian hospitals to treat wounded soldiers. The main expansion is planned for the Northwestern Federal District, near the Baltic states.
Additional beds will be added primarily in Karelia, St. Petersburg, the Leningrad and Novgorod regions, as well as in the Moscow and Smolensk regions. This involves not only the construction of new military hospitals—part of the existing civilian hospitals, including maternity hospitals and specialized inpatient facilities, are planned to be fully or partially repurposed for military use, while continuing to admit civilian patients in other departments.
Russia’s specialized military hospitals have been unable to cope with the influx of wounded since 2023, which is why the Russian Ministry of Defense is increasingly relying on civilian medical facilities. In 2026, the ministry planned to open six new military hospitals—four in the European part of the country and two in the Far East. All of them have already been completed, and five are currently operational.
As of 2026, Russia’s military medical facilities have at least 58,300 beds—which, according to the source’s assessment, is still not enough. A telling example comes from an anesthesiologist at the S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg: one of the wards is designed to accommodate 40 patients, but in reality, there are up to 86 people there, so additional beds are being set up in the hallways, and mattresses are being placed in the wards. According to him, a similar shortage of beds is observed in other hospitals in St. Petersburg and throughout the country.
“Volia” sources offer various explanations for the choice of regions for expansion. One of them highlights the well-developed medical infrastructure of St. Petersburg—Russia’s main center for military medicine, where civilian medical care is second only to Moscow in terms of development. “Regions bordering Ukraine have long been overwhelmed with the wounded, as have regions in the North Caucasus,” the source noted, adding that the expansion will take place precisely at the expense of regions with the greatest medical capacity.
Two other sources interviewed by the channel consider this explanation incomplete and insist that the choice of regions is determined primarily by geography: the wounded are usually transported to the nearest available facilities, so the location of new hospital facilities may indicate the likely direction of future hostilities. One of them added that data on the treatment of military personnel in Russia has been kept as classified as possible since 2014, since it indirectly reveals the state’s intentions, and the conversion of hospitals in western regions to serve military personnel, he said, could signal preparations for combat operations in a new direction.
Between 2021 and 2026, the number of hospital beds in Russia’s military medical facilities increased by approximately 6,300. The planned integration of civilian hospitals in the fall of 2026 is expected to add another 16,000–20,000 beds—2.5 to 3.2 times more than the increase over the previous five years.
The regions on the list—Karelia, St. Petersburg, Leningrad Oblast, and Novgorod Oblast—are located in northwestern Russia, near the Baltic states, while Moscow and Smolensk Oblasts lie further south and west. The preparation of additional beds does not in itself confirm Russia’s intentions to attack the Baltic states; however, sources interviewed by “Volya” link the geography of the medical infrastructure to a possible new theater of operations.
This was reported by “Military.”
As a reminder, a Russian drone strike was recorded in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district on September 15. Black smoke rose from the site.
In the Solomyanskyi district of the capital, a strike was recorded on the grounds of a garage cooperative.
