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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”