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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

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

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

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 became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”