UKRAINIAN amputee soldiers are returning to the front line to fight the Russians.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky disclosed that his country has 380,000 injured military personnel. In several brigades, there is a significant number of amputees who have returned to active duty.
He added that 46,000 have been killed over the three-year course of the war against Russia, with tens of thousands missing.
Intelligence soldier Andrii Rubliuk, 38, lost both arms and a leg when he was struck by an explosive.
He now uses prosthetic limbs and vowed to return to the front line.
He said: “Fighting with arms and legs is something anyone can do. Fighting without them — that’s a challenge.”
Leonid Lobchuk, a soldier with Ukraine’s 127th brigade, lost his leg during a border conflict in 2015.
But he remains undeterred, smiling for a photo in front of a howitzer in the Kharkiv region earlier this month.
Maksym Vysotskyi, 42, lost his left leg when stepping on a landmine after a drone mission in November 2023.
By the following May, he was back in uniform.
He said: “I quickly accepted the fact that my leg was gone. What’s the point of mourning?
“Crying and worrying won’t bring it back.”
Maksym now commands a team operating explosives-laden drones on night-time missions.
Oleksandr Zhalinskyi, 34, lost his right arm when he was an infantry soldier and is now a navigator-driver.
He said: “At first, I did not like this job. When I returned to service, I was ready to go back to the infantry.”
He plans to open a pub after the war — called Amputated Conscience.
Last month Ukraine held its first amputee football tournament, with teams made up of soldiers who have lost limbs in the conflict.
