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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

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

During one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”