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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”