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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the sky above.

Medical staff at an underground hospital observe a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, located in the eastern part of the country close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers 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 limb trauma requiring amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can move on their own. Almost all are the casualties of enemy FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

On one day recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a second explosive on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. The only way to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, 28, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in a neighboring country, Filipchuk said he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody bandage and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces has to defend our country,” he said.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, over two hundred health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching the surface. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, plans to build twenty facilities in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”