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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

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

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, 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.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”