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Sparse trees hide the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill 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 alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”