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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (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. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”