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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. 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. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”