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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

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

On one day recently, 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 blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”