A Full Meters Below the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Injured by Russian Drones

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”