Six Meters Under the Earth, a Secret Hospital Treats Ukraine's Troops Wounded by Russian Drones

Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”