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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”