🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked 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 screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”