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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”