🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”