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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”