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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point 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 pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”