Six Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Cares for Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month 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 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”