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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”