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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

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

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”