Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.
Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the area.
Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.
This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.
Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
During one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”
Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.
The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.
A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.
Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.
Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.
Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.
A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.
An example of the centre’s operating theatres.
The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.
Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”
