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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel protected,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We see few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the underground installation for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three soldiers limped into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to get to their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four reinforced shelters, with timber beams, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the centre’s surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, said some injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for such an extended period there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”