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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “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 lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of artillery hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, intends to build 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”