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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told 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 said.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”