Donetsk clinic faces cold amid fighting

Donetsk Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 is located in the district of Petrovsky, close to one of the frontlines in the armed conflict between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian forces that surround the city. The building came under artillery fire in December.

Many of the windows were damaged when the building came under fire. Temperatures can reach minus 25 degrees Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit). Patients and staff alike work around the clock chopping wood and feeding fires. Here, two patients cut wood taken from the trees that fell during the shelling.

A doctor tends to the stove that heats his ward. Doctors here not only care for their patients' mental conditions; they are constantly working alongside patients and staff to heat the hospital, making sure no one is exposed to the severe cold. On colder days all the patients collect around this stove to keep warm.

Several beds were moved into this doctors office after the building was hit. The hospital has no money to repair damages, so it has to make do by covering broken windows with plywood or shifting beds to places unexposed to the outside, whether those are doctors' offices or corridors.

This spent cartridge from a 100 mm anti-tank gun was found in the fields close to the hospital. It is now used as a vase in the hospital director's office.

A patient carries a pot of food to her ward. Some patients get to go to the kitchen building, along with a nurse, to pick up their lunch. It's one of the few moments when patients are allowed to leave their wards.

Patients eat their lunch in the main room of their ward. The hospital has problems with its food supply as funds are very scarce. It mainly relies on the local church and private citizens, who help as much as they can.

A doctor and nurse visit patients in their room. The main building was severely damaged and the kitchen roof was destroyed in the shelling in December and months before, in August, so space has become tight.

A volunteer hairdresser gives a haircut to one of the patients, while others wait for their turn in their beds.

A patient smokes on the balcony of his ward looking out on the park outside. Cigarettes and matches are kept by the nurses, who give them to the patients at scheduled times.