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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”