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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”