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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. One descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is the nation's secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians dropped a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”