🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to 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 water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”