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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. 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 armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers 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, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”