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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”