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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”