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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility began operations in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which drop grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was injured, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I lost sensation anything or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to international monitors, 261 health workers have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to build twenty units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the survival of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since Russia’s military offensive.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been applied for such an extended period there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”