A Full Metres Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”