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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

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

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had 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 surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”