When Viktor, a 43-year-old Ukrainian man living on disability benefits, developed severe leg abscesses last year, he was told the only solution was immediate surgery.

The hospital in his hometown of Vuhledar, a small, shabby mining town in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, lacked the necessary specialist care. Viktor found other facilities further away where doctors offered to operate, but they wanted to charge him 5,000 Ukrainian Hyrvnia (about $190) — a commonplace act of corruption in a country where healthcare is supposed to be free.

Then a former girlfriend told Viktor about a “special program” in the region offering high-quality surgery, for free.

There was a catch, though. The hospitals involved in the program were on the other side of the frontline of Ukraine’s grinding four-year-old war, in territory held by Russian-backed separatists. And they have been offering free medical care as a way of winning support in parts of Donbas under Ukrainian government control, thus turning patients into participants in an information war.