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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many 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 carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”