🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”