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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. 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. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

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

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”