in March and relaunched the war.

Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Zhalinskyi of the Azov brigade, who lost his right arm in battle, drives a car in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)They are among Ukraine’s 380,000 war wounded, according to

. Some 46,000 soldiers have been killed during the three-year war, and tens of thousands are missing and in captivity.On the front line Russia is expending huge amounts of weaponry and human life to make small butto the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it controls. Meanwhile Ukraine, outnumbered and outgunned, faces challenges not only on the battlefield

, raising fears that Ukraine and its European partners will be sidelined.Pavlo Romanovskyi, chief of a Ukrainian drone laboratory who lost a leg in battle, talks to a fellow soldier in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Pavlo Romanovskyi, chief of a Ukrainian drone laboratory who lost a leg in battle, talks to a fellow soldier in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

It is this dire situation that has driven wounded soldiers back to the front, where little has changed since they first left their civilian lives to defend their families from an invading neighbor.Everything in this new home is unsettling, even undignified. “We have no toilets,” Hassan said, and described having to go inside the hut while others collected his feces.

“Today, at least we have this,” Issack said, sitting on a foam mattress in a living space he could almost span by reaching out both hands.A loaded donkey cart arrived nearby, full of boys, the oldest with the reins. Their mothers walked beside it, carrying babies. As newcomers, they’ll sleep on the ground until they, too, receive a square drawn in the dust.

They were among 77 households who arrived at the camp on a single day.Somalis who have been displaced settle at a camp on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)