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Scrubby foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered 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 expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”