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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. 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 encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”