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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In 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 zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% 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 war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”