🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

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

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel 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 critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”