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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”