🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”