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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

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

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”