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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”