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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”