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Sparse trees hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations 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 city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”