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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in 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 lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”