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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

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

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to 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 repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”