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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 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 drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation 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 working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation 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 traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”