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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One descending timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members 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 limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”