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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”