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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform 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 severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”