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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage 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 struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”