Six Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukraine's Troops Injured by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month 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 the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia 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. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”