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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”