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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “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 such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”