Six Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary 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 operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”