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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”