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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment 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 few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”