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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”