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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”