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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly 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 medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”