A Full Metres Under the Earth, a Secret Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Enemy Drones

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving 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 undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”