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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned 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 doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”