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Sparse trees conceal the entrance. A sloping wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets full of medical equipment, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a display. It shows the flight patterns of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

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

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of a key location in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our wounded soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “90% of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Major the senior surgeon at the subterranean facility for caring for injured soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a small hole in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Then the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. There are UAVs everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to seize since last year. Sole access to reach their location was by walking. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. A week after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, Filipchuk said he had returned to Ukraine and enlisted to fight days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was injured in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is built from four reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, soil and sand placed above up to the surface. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the construction, plans to erect 20 facilities in all. A senior official of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

Holovashchenko, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received two severely injured patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” How did he cope with traumatic surgeries? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies wheeled Mykolaichuk through the tunnel 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 facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, walked toward the entrance to greet the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon said. “It doesn’t stop.”