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Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. One descending wooden tunnel leads down to a well-illuminated welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, equipped with gurneys, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. And cabinets stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, physicians monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they weave in the air above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor showing Russian kamikaze and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground medical facility. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the urban area of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters below the earth. It’s the safest way of providing help to our injured military personnel. And it keeps healthcare workers safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 patients a day. Cases differ widely. Some have catastrophic leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or severe stomach wounds. Others can move on their own. Almost all are the victims of enemy first-person view (FPV) aerial devices, which drop grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from first-person view drones. We encounter few gunshot wounds. This is an age of unmanned aircraft and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj the senior surgeon at the underground installation for caring for wounded troops in eastern Ukraine.

On one afternoon last week, three soldiers limped into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an FPV blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the village is destroyed. We see drones all around and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his squad spent 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been trying to seize for many months. Sole access to get to their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by quadcopter: food and water. Seven days after he was hurt, he walked 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his lower limb.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was fortunate to survive. My cousin has been killed. We face continuous detonations.” A builder working in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to his homeland and volunteered to serve shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of artillery hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my military group. Someone has to protect our nation,” he said.

Doctors treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from multiple reinforced shelters, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm projectiles and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by drone.

A major industrial group, which funded the construction, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, said certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of air assaults. “We had two severely injured casualties who came at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been healthcare for two decades. One must focus,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, Vasilevs, padded up to the doorway to greet the next arrivals. “We are open 24 hours a day,” the surgeon said. “The work is continuous.”