Six Metres Under the Earth, a Hidden Hospital Treats Ukraine's Soldiers Injured by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”