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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”