🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”