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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “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. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”