🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”