For more than a year, civilian doctors in Ukraine have been swapping their white coats for military fatigues, joining thousands of combat medics — from nurses to anesthesiologists to pediatricians — who are putting their lives on the line to treat an endless stream of casualties.

In this exclusive video, New York Times journalists spent a week inside a military field hospital in eastern Ukraine, filming a team of combat medics as they raced to save the lives of wounded soldiers.

“We’re working on two front lines,” said Oleksiy Nazarishin, a Ukrainian surgeon and the chief medical officer. “The war against the enemy and the war for the patient’s life.”

The severity and frequency of the casualties are the result of a long, protracted battle with Russian forces in the Donbas region that has reached a bloody stalemate, with no end in sight. For the medics, it’s a grueling cycle of trauma, death and exhaustion.

And when an injured enemy Russian soldier arrives at the field hospital, the medics must set aside their anger and uphold their medical oath to treat him like any other patient.