🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”