Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.
Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.
This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.
The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.
Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
During one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”
Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.
The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.
A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.
A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.
Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.
Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.
The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.
An example of the facility's surgical rooms.
Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.
Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”
