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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”