A Full Metres Below Ground, a Secret Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Troops Injured by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”