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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations 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 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. 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 first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”