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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to 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 method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”