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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters under the ground. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 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 by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

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 former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”