Six Metres Under Ground, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Drones

Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air 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 eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”