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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor showing enemy kamikaze and surveillance drones in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit spent 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: food and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic operations? “My career in medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”