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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”