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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation 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 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”