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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”