🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”