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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground hospital. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”