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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. It’s the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was injured, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of mortar.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the lives of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “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 a patient. His bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”