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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within 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 zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”