A Full Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”