🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is 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 close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to 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 tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”