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Sparse foliage hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the movements of Russian surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Hospital staff at an underground medical center look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and surveillance UAVs in the region.

This is the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the frontline and the city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres under the earth. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release explosives with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for treating injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, a group of three military members limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the Russians released a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit spent 43 days in a wooded zone close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their position was by walking. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medic assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “My position was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I believe I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to fight days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, 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 preserving the lives of our military and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill casualties who came at the early hours. I had to perform a removal of both limbs on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff took a break. The facility's ginger cat, the mascot, walked up to the doorway to await the incoming patients. “We are open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”