🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”