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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain 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. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”