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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”