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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”