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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to 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), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”