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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’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 placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’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 battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”