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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”