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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”