🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained 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 location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”