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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground 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 the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “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 Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary 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.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”