A Full Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Injured by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck 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 affirmed.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”