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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told 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 must protect our country,” he said.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build twenty units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”