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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”