🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated 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 earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” 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 protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”