“I don’t think about the risks,” says John Frodel, a U.S. facial plastic surgeon who has made 13 missions in Ukraine since 2022, performing reconstructive surgery on soldiers disfigured by shrapnel, mines, and drone strikes. The Kyiv Independent joined the “Face-to-Face” mission – now in its fourth year – at a military hospital in Ukraine, where complex surgeries and custom prosthetics are giving wounded defenders a chance to rebuild their lives.