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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”