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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”