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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance drones 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, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “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. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. He and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”