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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”