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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

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

On one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”