The country at war already has tens of thousands of amputees, a number that is growing as the conflict bogs down and continues to ravage the bodies of combatants. Some, despite their prosthesis, wish to join their brothers in arms on the front. Report from a rehabilitation center in Lviv, western Ukraine.
A man in his wheelchair stares into space, away from the group, his two stumps of legs in space. Around him, in this rehabilitation room in Western Ukraine, other cripples are exercising, under the watchful eye of therapists. Ihor Berezanskiy, 55, is feeling gloomy, five months after the injury that left him disabled. “A huge, huge attack…” said sighing to the Duty the man with the small rectangular glasses, who looks ten years older than his age. It was in November, not far from Kupiansk, on the Ukrainian Eastern Front. Ihor and his comrades, about to change position, were surprised by Russian artillery fire. “Some of our men survived, and others never came back,” he emphasizes. Part of his unit was decimated.
Ihor — “papi”, from his nom de guerre, “because of [s]”gray hair” — joined the Superhumans center in Lviv two months ago, one of the re-education establishments that emerged in this rear city, more than two years after the all-out war launched by Russia . Joining the army was obvious for someone who, before February 24, 2022, worked as an auto mechanic. He presented himself at the conscription office without hesitation, from the first day of the large-scale invasion, “so as not to wait for the Russians to come to us”.
The other side of the war tearing Ukraine apart is revealed on this April morning in this center on the outskirts of Lviv, adjacent to a military hospital. Even before crossing the threshold, we see amputee men smoking a cigarette, others parading in wheelchairs, with one, two, sometimes four limbs missing. Most are former soldiers, like the thousands of mutilated veterans who paid for resistance with their flesh. The country has “around 20,000”, underlines Duty a source from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
Many of them, despite their handicap, wish to return to fight against the invader. In kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, we meet Ivan, who, just out of rehabilitation, aspires to join his brothers-in-arms on the front “in six months”, despite his prosthesis which serves as a leg. ” In my [unité], there are also many pirates like me! » he said jokingly. In Superhumans, Ihor also says he wants to return to the armed forces, once his rehabilitation is complete, perhaps as a support role in the rear. He doesn’t know anything about it at the moment. “It all depends on when I can walk with prosthetics. But we have no choice to continue, our country is at stake,” emphasizes, resigned, the man with a sad face. His plans for the next few months? “Feeling better,” he replies, claiming a medical appointment to cut the discussion short.
People with diplomas don’t necessarily understand what it means to live with a prosthesis.
“The children are afraid of you”
The brand new center is always full, as the war drags on and continues to ravage the bodies of the combatants. Since its opening just a year ago, in April 2023, some 450 patients have followed a rehabilitation program there, provided free of charge, thanks to foreign donations. In addition to the prosthesis manufacturing workshop, a temporary residence for 70 injured people as well as a surgery center for facial reconstruction has been set up at Superhumans. Indeed, among these seriously injured people from Ukraine, there are also many “broken faces”, an allusion to these soldiers, during the First War, who returned from the front with scarred faces.
The other specificity of the center lies in the staff, partly composed of former patients. Like the radiant Ruslana Danilkina, met at the reception. “People with diplomas don’t necessarily understand what it means to live with a prosthesis,” says the 20-year-old Ukrainian, with long brown hair and an ex-soldier, in a soft voice. A black prosthesis serves as her right leg, lost on the Kherson front, in February 2023. “I was in the car with brothers in arms when a shell fell on us,” says the young woman from Kherson placidly. ‘Odessa.
Hired as a “first contact therapist”, after her rehabilitation, this daughter of soldiers found her new vocation working with wounded soldiers. “I am sometimes asked: what is life like after the center? I tell them straight away that it will be hard,” confides Ruslana. First there is the mourning of certain sensations to be had, of this past life. “But the prosthesis is not just a piece of iron, it is also a part of us. And that doesn’t stop us from playing sports or driving a car, for example. »
Oleg Tsunovskyi, a man with an affable face, approaches, balancing on the only leg he has left, minus his left arm. In a few minutes, he will receive new adapted prostheses. A doctor of theology, the 35-year-old man spontaneously signed up to fight the Russian invader, until his injury in the summer of 2023, in the Luhansk region. “Waking up in the hospital was terrible, even though I expected to lose part of my body,” recalls the intellectual, then feeling dizzy; how can you approach the rest of your life, “while telling yourself that two days before, you could still run and walk”? “Since then, with each passing day, I have kept myself busy, doing what is necessary to re-educate myself,” continues this originally left-handed man, who “had to learn to shave with his right hand.”
As for the view of the rest of society, that matters little to him. “Some may look away, stare, smile or thank, with their hand on their heart. » Except that Oleg can’t stand being pitied. He declines every offer of help, “unless[il] is not capable of it.”
At the rehabilitation center, we learn to live again. Cooking, swimming, walking. For these fighters, many of whom had never held a weapon before February 2022, it is a return to civilian life. “The other day we made fries with a patient, Serhii. He wanted it. It took three hours, but he did it! » underlines Mariia Kosovska, a 28-year-old occupational therapist.
The fate of amputees is increasingly evident in Ukraine, which could have up to five million veterans at the end of the war. Above all, they want to be seen as “normal people, with respect, but without falling into heroism,” says Oleh Bereziuk, head of the psychiatry department at Lviv hospital. Indeed, if this front where they fight is a symbol of bravery for some, “for them, it means hell”.
Certainly, a good number of Ukrainians show solidarity towards them, but the risk of being ostracized remains. Oleh Bereziuk recounts an anecdote that occurred in a Ukrainian school a few months ago: “A father, a double amputee, very proud to have come to pick up his son from school, was rebuffed by the principal who told him said: “Leave, please, the children are afraid of you”. »
Trauma
Beyond the bruised bodies, invisible wounds can be hidden. Mr. Bereziuk also sees soldiers returning from captivity parade. Failing to talk about the unspeakable torture they experienced at the hands of the Russians, some soldiers indulge in art therapy. The doctor presents the distressing drawing of a veteran, taken prisoner after the siege of Mariupol. Mr. Bereziuk hopes that the Ukrainian hospital system will equip itself with an arsenal of psychological support in the face of the deluge of trauma, since the scourges of the post-war period are already looming: suicides, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.
At Superhumans, there is a surprising good-natured atmosphere, punctuated by the catchy music that resonates in the immaculate corridors. Many display unshakeable morale, like Oleksii Tiunin, 37, who had his right leg amputated. Sitting in the hall of the center, bathed in sunlight, the former soldier exudes a certain enthusiasm, even admitting “that living with a prosthesis is less hard than he had imagined”. “In any case, when I joined the army, I understood what awaited me,” he admits.
Even though his rehabilitation ended last January, he often goes to the Superhumans center, “his second family”. “The energy we find here is perhaps due to the fact that we are in a modern hospital, not Soviet style,” says the tall guy with tattoos on his arms, smiling.
Perhaps also because many here consider themselves lucky to still be alive, after having almost died? Oleksii “saw death with his own eyes”. In August 2023, during the failed counter-offensive of the Kiev army, he participated in the reconquest of the village of Andriïvka, in the Bakhmout region, as a volunteer soldier in the 3e assault brigade, known for its pugnacity. Hit by bullets, Oleksii remained immobilized for many hours, bleeding to death. Without his unit’s combat doctor who, under heavy enemy fire, provided him with emergency care, Oleksii is aware that he would not be here today.
For him, the army is over. He wants to help his wounded peers to understand this “new chapter of life, and also to educate society about it, because this is the new normal in Ukraine: people on the streets must get used to seeing people with prostheses.
If Oleksii does not hide a certain guilt towards his brothers in arms, still at the front, he resolves today to embrace life, in honor of his comrades fallen in combat. “And also so that their death is not in vain. »
With Iryna Sknar
This report was financed thanks to the Transat-International Journalism Fund.The duty.