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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day last week, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect twenty units in total. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came 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 alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”