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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. A descending wooden tunnel leads down to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a operating ward, equipped with beds, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of Russian spy drones as they weave in the air above.

Hospital personnel at an underground hospital observe a screen displaying Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center began operations in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured soldiers. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles thirty to forty casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. Almost all are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three soldiers walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, 28-year-old one soldier, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces released a second grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to get to their location was by walking. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored denim trousers.

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

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with a head injury. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I think I was lucky to survive. A relative has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight days before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a bed, removed a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a deflected projectile. I’m OK,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To get better. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Someone must defend our nation,” he said.

Doctors care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a fragment of artillery shell.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in nearly two thousand attacks. The underground facility is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three 8kg TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to build 20 units in all. The head of the nation's security agency and former defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “vitally essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented since Russia’s military offensive.

One 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 due to the threat of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill casualties who arrived at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on a patient. The soldier's tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was parked under a bush. The patient and the other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for additional medical care. The underground medical team paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “Our facility operates active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “The work is continuous.”