🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”