In a rehabilitation center in Lviv, near the Polish border, Dmytro waddles, lying on a physio table. From an old radio comes the song Fortetssia Bakhmout (“Bakhmout, the fortress”) by the Ukrainian rock group Antytila - a tribute to the Ukrainian city of Donbass, the scene of terrible fighting for a year. The 30-year-old with arms covered in tattoos taps the ground with his right foot, rhythmically. His left leg remains static. She is amputated at the knee. Dmytro sacrificed her to Bakhmout, before the city fell to the Russians. “I was injured by a mine on February 1. Two days later, this song came out on the radio, I heard it on repeat when I was in intensive care at the hospital, says Dmytro. It brings me back to Bakhmout.” He closes his eyes, sings, his features tense with memories. Snow, mud, shells. The radio crackles, stops abruptly. Dmytro returns to reality. Another soldier shakes the device. The song resounds again. “She will follow me all my life…”, confides the one who, like thousands of Ukrainians, took up arms on February 24, 2022.
Before the Russian invasion, kyiv had 400,000 veterans who fought in the First Donbass War (2014). At least 1.5 million Ukrainians are currently fighting, although the exact figure is not public. And the experience of fire will mark an entire generation. What will a society look like which, in a few years, will count up to five million of veterans, according to the Ministry of Defense? The Express went to seek answers from several of them, recently returned from the front, and marked for life in their flesh. All are united by a common experience, summarizes Andriy Kozintchouk, a military psychologist contacted by telephone, from his Donbass brigade: “That of having learned to survive and rubbed shoulders with death from near and far.”
“Russia murders the flower of the nation”
First, these men describe an extraordinary daily life. The positions to be held, the Spartan trenches dug by hand, the constant shelling, the lack of hygiene and sleep, the energy drinks, which sometimes lead to the hospital for heartburn, the dried rations, the coffee soluble, volunteer packages, drones and pick-ups bought abroad, sometimes destroyed in one mission, calls to relatives that last five minutes or hours, hours on TikTok to escape boredom, music rock or techno to blur fear, sadness, guilt, and the losses that accumulate. The count remains secret-defense until the end of the war. But no one forgets the dead. Ghosts who, by the tens of thousands, follow the living. “Russia is murdering the flower of the nation”, breathes Masi Nayyem, who quotes his deceased friend, Roman Ratouchny, 24-year-old activist, symbol of the “Maidan generation” who rose up in 2014. Commander Dzianis keeps him , leading his best friend Ilya, who died before his eyes at Irpin, facing the columns of Russian tanks.
In the rehabilitation room of Lviv hospital, Ihor remembers this young recruit, who disappeared during a perilous reconnaissance mission. It was just after the long-awaited liberation of Kherson in November 2022, the 50-year-old drove over a mine, during a reconnaissance mission with two brothers in arms. The first received minor injuries, the second died instantly. Ihor lost both of his legs. As he tries, when we meet him, to take his first steps on his steel prostheses, embedded in his knees, he approaches us with a joke. “At least I was able to choose my shoe size, laughs this 58-year-old man, piercing blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. But I didn’t do it very original, I took 43, like Before.”
In this rehabilitation center called Unbroken (unbreakable), and completely new thanks to foreign funds, Ihor is the oldest of a dozen men damaged by the war. Since May 2022, this institute attached to the Lviv municipal hospital has treated nearly 15,000 war victims, the most serious cases. In the physio room, Roksolana, a 25-year-old physiotherapist, leads a group of soldiers doing exercises in a good-natured atmosphere. In the adjacent room, Ilya is playing table tennis. Even if his face and his body still bear the traces of serious burns, the thirty-year-old jumps with dexterity on his only leg.
Lack of support and bureaucratic nonsense
The Ukrainian health system, inherited from the Soviet era, is struggling to absorb the number of physical and psychological injuries linked to the invasion. But, for the moment, he is holding up as well as he can. Because the vast majority of soldiers are still at the front. Ihor, who now has American weapons, remembers – not without irony – the time when he was sent to fight in Afghanistan, then supported by the United States. “There, I was blown up twice by the same mines that killed my legs last year. But at that time, we always had armored cars. Since February 24, I I’ve never driven one! Some soldiers even do military operations in Nissans,” laments the veteran, stroking his aching knees.
After nine operations, the 50-year-old learns to walk again. He even drove for the first time in Lviv. The overwhelming majority of the wounded, once healed, return to take up posts in the army. The medical board must soon decide whether Ihor will be discharged. His wife is categorically opposed to his reinstatement. “It’s as if she suffered more than me. I could already sleep with us rather than here, but she can’t stand prostheses, she calls them UFOs”, he slips.
Returning from the front, Masi Nayyem himself realized the lack of care for wounded soldiers and the absurdity of the bureaucracy, also inherited from the USSR. Touched by the eye, this lawyer receives us in his office in kyiv. After days of waiting in hospital, this veteran of the first Donbass war who took up arms in 2022 has still not received his invalidity status. He also does not have the right to work because he is still part of the army. So he and his associates created an app to help soldiers navigate the ocean of paperwork that accompanies injury and returning to civilian life.
Andriy Kozintchouk, the military psychologist, has a project to create psychological support groups for veterans, to avoid “waves of suicide”, when the war will – one day – be over. “All the soldiers will come back different, but that does not necessarily mean that all is lost,” insists the specialist. “All these years I fought, I could have gotten married, had children, developed my business, or simply enjoyed life, says lawyer Masi Nayyem. We have lost the most precious thing: the time to live. The majority of Ukrainians will never forgive Russia for this.” But, he continues, “there are always positives and negatives: on the one hand, I have lost my sense of smell and part of my sight, but on the other, I appreciate what I have , I’m so happy to have two legs and to be able to walk”.