That night, in the trenches, 38-year-old Vitali Lykhobytsky was wearing a brand-new helmet, equipped with a state-of-the-art headphone system. The soldier was in Luhansk, in the Donbas, observing the enemy lines through his thermal camera, when a Russian sniper fired at him. The bullet destroyed the camera and punctured his eye. "The first thing I thought was, 'Luckily, my helmet wasn't hit!'" said Lykhobytsky, a neat-looking Ukrainian man who had joined the army just two days after the Russian invasion in February 2022. His second thought was for his children: "I was afraid I'd never see them again."

It has taken almost two years since he was injured, in May 2023, and several operations, for Lykhobytsky's face to regain its former appearance. On a morning in March, the veteran, who has gone back to civilian life and works for a construction company, had another appointment at the Medestet aesthetic medical clinic in Kyiv, to reduce his scars.

The thermal camera's explosion had left him with plastic, glass and aluminum debris lodged under his skin. Lying back in a chair at the clinic, Lykhobytsky, now sporting a glass eye, grimaced as the laser acted on his skin. "We smooth out the scars, and then repigment them, so they're no longer white," said the surgeon, Andri Starodubtsev, who specializes in facial reconstruction.

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