🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”