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Sparse trees hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”