🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’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 close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”