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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization 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, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”