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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve 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, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. 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. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”