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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”