🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned 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 deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”