🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”