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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”