A Full Meters Under Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Injured by Enemy Drones

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly 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 medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”