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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”