🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. 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.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”