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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”