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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, 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, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even 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. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”