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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. One sloping timber tunnel leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a operating ward, outfitted with gurneys, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves stocked of medical equipment, medications and neat piles of extra garments. Within a staff room with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. The facility began operations 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 city of a key location in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters below the ground. This is the safest way of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures medical personnel safe,” said the facility's surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats 30-40 patients a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries necessitating surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from FPVs. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon explained.

Maj the senior surgeon at the subterranean installation for caring for injured troops in the eastern region.

On one day last week, three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, reported an FPV blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is horrific. The guy beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another explosive on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his squad endured 43 days in a forest area near the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture since last year. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was hurt, he walked five kilometers (about 3 miles), taking three hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his vital signs. After treatment, a nurse provided him with fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of light-colored jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, 28, said a FPV drone caused a minor injury in his leg.

Another patient, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. Suddenly it became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to survive. A relative has been lost. We face continuous detonations.” A builder employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had returned to his homeland and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's full-scale invasion in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a bloody dressing and cleaned his recent shrapnel wound. Wrapped in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his sister. “A fragment of mortar struck me. The cause was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. After that, to return to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he affirmed.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was injured in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently attacked hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. According to human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and sand laid on top up to ground level. It can withstand direct hits from 152mm projectiles and even three 8kg TNT charges released by aerial means.

A major industrial group, which financed the building, plans to build 20 facilities in total. The head of the nation's national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the frontline.” The organization described the project as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s military offensive.

One of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured personnel had to endure delays many hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated due to the threat of aerial attacks. “We had a pair of severely injured patients who came at 3am. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been on for such an extended period there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were taken to the city of a major city for further treatment. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are active around the clock,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”