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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”