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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”