🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. 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 a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays 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 casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”