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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret 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 Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”