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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. 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 focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He 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 orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”