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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”