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Scrubby foliage hide the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center observe a screen showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. It’s an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a first-person view drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to ring his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must defend our country,” he said.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He 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, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”