A Full Meters Below Ground, a Secret Hospital Treats Ukraine's Soldiers Injured by Enemy Drones

Sparse trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”