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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, 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 medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”