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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point 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 fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”