🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone ripped a small hole 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 couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “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 vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”