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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”