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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”