Six Metres Under Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Wounded by Enemy Drones

Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

On one day last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”