Six Meters Under Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”