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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”