🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit 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. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”