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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”