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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted 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 think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”