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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

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

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, 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. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”