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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway leads down to a brightly lit reception area. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating limb trauma necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is demolished. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier explained his unit endured over a month in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. Sole access to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by drone: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. This may require a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple 8kg TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build 20 facilities in total. A senior official of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to wait hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. 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 said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the urban center of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean medical team took a break. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “The work is continuous.”