🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”