Six Meters Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukrainian Troops Injured by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients 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 so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”