A Full Meters Below Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Wounded by Russian Drones

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”