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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, 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 six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine 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 upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”