A Full Metres Under the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”