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Sparse trees hide the entryway. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the region.

This is the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

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

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”