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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”