🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month 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 ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform 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 other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”