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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel 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 arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”