🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”