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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. One descending timber tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest method of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been killed. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Our forces must protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three 8kg explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a removal of both limbs 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 healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”