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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 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. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”