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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”