For more than 11 years, medics and humanitarian workers have worked near the front line of the war in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the sensory experience of war has become familiar to everyone in Ukraine, but nowhere is it more ubiquitous and constant than in areas close to the front line.

Today, In Kherson, an MSF medical team is fully bunkerised in a hospital, living and working for two-week rotations without leaving the building, sleeping in a rough concrete basement, not even risking cigarette breaks outside. When patients near the frontline are unable to seek care for lengthy periods due to the intensity of the fighting (including patients with chronic conditions) they often end up here in the ER department or the Intensive Care Unit when their conditions has become life-threateningly serious. While the team in Kherson predominantly treat patients with complications due to a prolonged lack of access to healthcare, given the proximity to the frontline, the team in Kherson also treats those wounded by the daily shelling and bombardments. In Dnipro, a city that faces regular drone attacks and sporadic bombardments, a number of MSF staff live and work, sometimes travelling to Pavlohrad to support people displaced by the shifting frontline, or to Pokrovske, where the last hospital before the frontline is based. Dnipro itself is often the target of drone swarms and bombardments; while those who inhabit the city, have little choice but to maintain their daily routines, with all the additional safeguards that come with living in a country at war.