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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground 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 frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. It’s the safest method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

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

On one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a second explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, said some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”