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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping timber passageway leads down to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of medical equipment, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

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

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, located in eastern Ukraine close to the combat zone and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the doctor said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for treating wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. The guy next to me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a second explosive on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. Upon arrival, a medic checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a first-person view aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had resulted in a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and granular material laid on top up to the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even multiple 8kg explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained some injured soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the threat of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who came at 3am. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier through the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the 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 ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”