🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”