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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion 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 think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”