Six Metres Under the Earth, a Hidden Medical Facility Treats Ukrainian Troops Injured by Enemy Drones

Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe 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 taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”