Six Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained 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 get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”