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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened 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 under the ground. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”