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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed 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 early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”