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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”