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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest way 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. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”