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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after 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 checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”