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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”