Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.
Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.
Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.
The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.
Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.
During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”
The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.
The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his leg.
A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.
Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.
Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.
Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.
The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.
An example of the centre’s operating theatres.
The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.
Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”
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