Six Metres Below Ground, a Secret Hospital Treats Ukraine's Soldiers Injured by Russian Drones

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted 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 hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader'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, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”