A Full Meters Under Ground, a Secret Medical Facility Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”