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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”