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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies 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. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff 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 medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”