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Sparse trees hide the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the frontline and the urban area 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 healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was injured, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the lives of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”