🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”