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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured 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 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”