🔗 Share this article

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”