🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”