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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “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 noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”