🔗 Share this article

Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”