A Full Meters Below the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Troops Injured by Russian Drones

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation 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 traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”