A Full Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Wounded by Russian Drones

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid 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 struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”