Six Meters Under Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days 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 by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”