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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”