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Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, heart rate sensors and ventilators. And cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and kettle, physicians monitor a display. It shows the movements of Russian spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center look at a screen showing enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the region.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret below-ground medical facility. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the urban area of a key location in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. This is the most secure way of providing help to our injured soldiers. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s lead doctor, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station treats thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from devastating limb trauma necessitating amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We encounter few bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for caring for injured soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV explosion had ripped a minor wound in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he said. “He collapsed. Subsequently the Russians dropped a another grenade on him.” He continued: “Everything in the village is demolished. There are drones all around and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his squad spent over a month in a wooded zone near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their location was on foot. All supplies arrived by drone: rations and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking several hours, to a point where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medic checked his vital signs. Following care, a medical attendant provided him with fresh civilian clothes: a shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, recounted a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly went dark. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been lost. We face ongoing detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to fight shortly before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and treated his recent shrapnel wound. Covered in a foil blanket, he borrowed a cellphone to ring his sister. “A piece of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to go back to my military group. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of mortar.

Over the past years, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. According to human rights groups, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost two thousand assaults. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and sand laid on top reaching ground level. It is designed to resist impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three 8kg explosive devices released by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, plans to erect twenty facilities in total. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for saving the lives of our military and supporting troops on the battlefront.” The company referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received two critically ill casualties who arrived at the early hours. I had to perform a double amputation on a patient. His 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 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was stationed beneath a shrub. He and the two other military members were taken to the urban center of Dnipro for further treatment. The subterranean medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”