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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

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

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”