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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon 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 explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast 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 fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”