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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”