🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

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

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 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 position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”