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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades 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 war,” the doctor said.

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

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, 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. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”