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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. This is the most secure method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

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

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”