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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

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

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” 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 medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build twenty units in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath 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 ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”