A Full Metres Below the Earth, a Secret Medical Facility Cares for Ukraine's Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion 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, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”