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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”