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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations 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 Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off 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 struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”