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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck 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 return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”