🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

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

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring 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 non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”