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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month 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 a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three 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 medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”