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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured 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, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet 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 focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”