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Sparse trees hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is 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 urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one day recently, three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. A week after he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. We face ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty units in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for preserving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who came at 3am. I had to perform 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 said.

Orderlies transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”