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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”