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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground 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 urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid 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 piece of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to 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 one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”