A Full Metres Under Ground, a Secret Hospital Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city 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. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. 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 defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”