🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’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 dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar 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. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”