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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

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

Welcome to the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our injured soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s lead doctor, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats 30-40 patients a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground facility for treating injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had ripped a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see UAVs everywhere and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to get to their location was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a first-person view drone caused a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a bed, removed a bloody dressing and treated his recent injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat Taras Mykolaichuk, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred health workers have been fatally attacked in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand placed above reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained some injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported because of the danger of air assaults. “We had two critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the other soldiers were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”