🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”