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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, 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 funded the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”