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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One sloping timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build 20 units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”