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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”