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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of 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 fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”