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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”