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Scrubby trees conceal the entryway. A sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an underground medical center observe a monitor displaying Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an first-person view drone explosion had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces dropped a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was by walking. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

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

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly targeted medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which financed the construction, intends to build twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “We had two severely injured patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the other military members were taken to the urban center of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”