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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors 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 cellphone to ring 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 several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company 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.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”