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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation 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 torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”