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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”