Six Meters Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Enemy Drones

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

On one afternoon last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 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 T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”