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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

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

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”