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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

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

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, 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 most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”