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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel 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 healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month 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 on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”