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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”