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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”