A Full Metres Below the Earth, a Secret Medical Facility Cares for Ukraine's Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”