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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three military members limped 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. “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 grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”