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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

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

On one afternoon 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 leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”