A Full Metres Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Russian Drones

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, 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 saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”