🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”