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Sparse trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. 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 defend our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”