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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center began operations 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 city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”