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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

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

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked 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 aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”