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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

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

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”