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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. It’s the most secure way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A builder employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered 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 groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's military offensive.

An example of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”