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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. A sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. 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 monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

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

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. There are continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”