🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”