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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

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

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”