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Scrubby trees conceal 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. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month 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. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

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

During one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”