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Scrubby trees hide the entrance. One descending timber passageway descends to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, heart rate sensors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, medications and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying enemy kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground medical facility. The facility 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 Donetsk oblast. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the earth. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” stated the facility's lead doctor, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic limb trauma necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We see few gunshot wounds. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon explained.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day recently, three soldiers limped into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is horrific. My comrade beside me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is destroyed. There are UAVs all around and casualties. Our side's and theirs.”

The soldier explained his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been trying to seize for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. All supplies came by drone: rations and water. A week following he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic assessed his physical condition. Following care, a nurse provided him with new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, stated a FPV aerial device caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position 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. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, Filipchuk noted he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader'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 stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. After that, to go back to my unit. Someone has to defend our nation,” he affirmed.

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

Over the past years, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is built from multiple steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and sand placed above reaching the surface. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even multiple 8kg explosive devices released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “vitally essential for saving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after the enemy's military offensive.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to wait hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two severely injured casualties who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on one of them. The soldier's bleeding control device had been applied for so long there was no other option.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “My career in medicine for two decades. You have to focus,” he remarked.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The facility's ginger cat, Vasilevs, walked up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon stated. “It doesn’t stop.”