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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. One sloping wooden passageway leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves stocked of healthcare supplies, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a monitor displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

This is the nation's secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma requiring surgical removal, or serious stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release grenades with deadly precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an era of drones and a different kind of war,” the doctor explained.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one afternoon last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had torn a small hole in his limb. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He continued: “All structures in the settlement is demolished. There are drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier said his unit spent 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies came by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. After treatment, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view drone caused a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel anything or any sound,” he said. “I think I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and enlisted to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors laid him on a medical cot, took off a stained dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple reinforced shelters, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top reaching the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken since Russia’s invasion.

An example of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had a pair of severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. It was necessary to perform a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was parked beneath a bush. He and the other military members were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”