🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to 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, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”