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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”