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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one day last week, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days 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 placed 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 mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed under a bush. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro 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. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”