A Full Meters Below the Earth, a Secret Hospital Treats Ukraine's Troops Injured by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”