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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”