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Scrubby foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an era of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

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

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to serve shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces has to defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “My career in medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”