A Full Metres Under Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Enemy Drones

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties 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 on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”