🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”