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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”