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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

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

On one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”