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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call 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 get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”