🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”