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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple 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 three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”