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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, 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. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground 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 the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”