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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”