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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”