Six Metres Under the Earth, a Secret Hospital Cares for Ukrainian Troops Wounded by Enemy Drones

Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit 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 few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”