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Sparse trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect 20 units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”