🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked 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 is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”