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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month 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. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere 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 since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: 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 lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”