🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”