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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”