On March 19, 1897, the first ambulance station opened in Warsaw.
A year later, the first two ambulance stations in Moscow were opened at the Sushchyovsky and Sretensky police precincts. Each station had one carriage equipped with medicines, instruments, and dressing materials. When called, a doctor, a paramedic, and an orderly went out in them. These teams quickly became well known and were in demand. The very first ambulance station in St. Petersburg was opened in 1899 on the initiative of the renowned surgeon Nikolai Velyaminov.
Later, after World War I, specialized ambulance teams appeared and research institutes were established. The best known in Russia is the Sklifosovsky Moscow City Research Institute for Emergency Medicine, which was opened in 1923.
Until the mid-1920s, "ambulance carriages" responded only to calls coming from the streets or industrial enterprises. The reason was not so much a lack of transport as established traditions: patients at home were usually attended by doctors in private practice.