A Full Metres Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Injured by Enemy Drones

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said 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 reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”