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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

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

On one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”