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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

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

This is the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”