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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”