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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital look at a screen displaying Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically 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 challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”