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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “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. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”