Six Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukrainian Troops Injured by Enemy Drones

Sparse trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

On one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”