🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”