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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”