A Full Metres Below Ground, a Secret Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Troops Injured by Russian Drones

Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

On one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit 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. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”