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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”