Six Metres Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Soldiers Injured by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I 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. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”