A Full Metres Under Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Treats Ukrainian Soldiers Injured by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”