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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, 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 quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”