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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

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 ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point 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 non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 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, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”