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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”