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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, 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 two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”