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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking 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 provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”