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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. 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 unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”