Sparse trees hide the entrance. A sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.
Hospital staff at an underground medical center observe a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.
Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.
The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.
Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.
During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”
Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.
The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.
Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” 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 early 2022.
A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.
Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.
Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.
The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.
One of the centre’s surgical rooms.
Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.
Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”
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