A Full Metres Under Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Drones

Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”