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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”