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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came 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 armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, 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 recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on 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.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”