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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

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

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a FPV drone ripped a small hole 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 trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out 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 surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”