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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

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

Welcome to the nation's secret underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to erect 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”