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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’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, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone 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 get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

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. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”