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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

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

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland 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 upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”