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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. 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 financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”