🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”