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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”