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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations 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 under the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

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

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, 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 any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received 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. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”