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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland 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 expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

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

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”