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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It 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 must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”