A Full Metres Under Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

On one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared 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 “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”