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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”