🔗 Share this article

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days 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 came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”