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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”