A Full Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Injured by Enemy Drones

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent 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 war,” the doctor said.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”