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Sparse foliage conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”