Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.
Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.
Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.
The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.
Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.
During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”
Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.
The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.
Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.
Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.
Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.
Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.
The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.
One of the facility's operating theatres.
The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.
Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”
