🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance 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.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

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

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”