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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”