A Full Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukrainian Troops Injured by Russian Drones

Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations 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 city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material 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 dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”