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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

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

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”