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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”