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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”