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

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”