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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”