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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility 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 city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station handles thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

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

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area close to the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several 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 gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

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

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”