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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

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

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”