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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

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

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

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

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

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

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. 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 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”