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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

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

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It 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 must defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary 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 traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”