🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”