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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. 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 under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”