🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”