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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

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

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”