A Full Metres Below Ground, a Secret Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Troops Injured by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”