🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located 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 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”