A Full Metres Below the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted 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 hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”