Six Metres Below the Earth, a Secret Medical Facility Cares for Ukraine's Soldiers Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”