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Sparse trees conceal the entryway. A sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. The vast majority are the victims of enemy FPV drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for caring for injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-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 fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days following he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a stained bandage and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a cellphone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above up to ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which funded the building, intends to erect twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former defence minister, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The company referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”