A Full Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Enemy Drones

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

On one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”