🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”