🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”