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New Straits Times
15-05-2025
- Health
- New Straits Times
In US hospital, maimed Ukrainian soldiers bear war's terrible cost
RUSSIA'S war in Ukraine left Oleksandr Vikhruk without both arms and his right leg. Maksym Radiuk lost his left arm, his eyesight and was badly burned. Now, through pain and sweat, Oleksandr, 45, works with US doctors to one day go fishing using prosthetic limbs. Maksym, 23, hopes the treatment will make him fit to join Ukraine's national football team for the blind. As the world awaits what promises to be the first direct negotiations Thursday in Turkiye between Moscow and Kyiv since the early months of the Russian invasion in 2022, the two badly injured Ukrainian soldiers being treated at an elite US military hospital outside Washington embody the tremendous cost of the war for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen and their families. "It's very painful, very scary to see your husband maimed," Oleksandr's wife Olha, 50, said, choking back tears. "I couldn't speak without tears. I couldn't live. For three months, I didn't speak to almost anybody, except the kids." She added: "It's a terrible, horrible war. I cannot describe it." Oleksandr was wounded in March 2023, when his infantry unit was ambushed by Russian drones in the eastern Donetsk region. Gravely wounded, Oleksandr applied tourniquets to his arms and leg, but had to wait 10 hours to get medical help because the evacuation route was under attack by Russian forces. "When I was in a lot of pain, I simply thought about something pleasant: my home, my wife, my children," Oleksandr, wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt and sitting in a wheelchair in the office of United Help Ukraine, a charity that covered the families' non-medical expenses during treatment. As hours passed, Oleksandr's body started shivering violently and he thought back to the time when he visited Marseille in southern France. "I imagined the sea and I started feeling warm. I plunged into my dreams, that's how I was able to endure it," Oleksandr said in a weak voice, his eyes reflecting the traumatic memories. When he was finally taken to hospital, his arms and leg had to be amputated and he spent 2.5 months in a medical coma. Later, he also suffered a cardiac arrest and a stroke – doctors said it was a miracle he survived. Olha was devastated, but eventually seeing how Oleksandr's eyes would light up when he saw her entering his intensive care unit gave her strength. "You begin to get used to this pain, to the idea that you must go on living, that life continues," said Olha, a soft-spoken brunette, also clad in a Ukrainian shirt. "We fought together," she added. "I would tell him, Sasha, you will live, I believe in you, we are together, we will get through this. And we did." In April 2024, Maksym's territorial defence unit was serving in the southern Kherson region, when a Russian drone exploded near his face. It destroyed his right eye, blew off his left arm and several fingers and set him on fire. Because of the shock, Maksym initially didn't feel any pain as he waited to be evacuated, but his legs were so badly burnt that it felt like he was wearing shorts. "I completely dissociated and just sat and waited and didn't think about anything," Maksym recalled, wearing sunglasses and sitting in a wheelchair. Maksym spent one and a half months in a medically induced coma after doctors amputated the remains of his arm. His wounds were so severe that his mother Natalia, 40, herself a servicewoman, was told that Maksym was unlikely to survive. When Maksym finally came to, he couldn't see. "He woke up and he asked me: how many eyes? I told him: one," said Natalia, adding that initially there was hope to save his left eye. "How many arms? I said: one. And legs? I said: two." Natalia, who brims with energy, said she only allowed herself a couple of hours to cry. "I decided that I will not help my child this way, that I need to pull myself together and move forward, forward, forward," she recalled. "I will do everything so that he can return to normal life and he will show people with arms and legs and eyes what he can do." The soldiers are scheduled to spend six months to a year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as part of a treatment plan paid for by the US Department of Defense. Both should receive bionic limbs, and doctors have also offered to transplant one of Maxym's toes onto his right hand. "I am very grateful that we were welcomed here in America, in this superb hospital, by superb professionals. They are great, they treat our guys very well, they treat them as heroes," said Natalia. But with the talks scheduled in Turkiye, the families hold out little hope for any fair and lasting peace deal with Moscow and called on the international community to do more to support Ukraine. "Everybody must rise up and scream that this war needs to be stopped," she added.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
In US hospital, maimed Ukrainian soldiers bear war's terrible cost
Russia's war in Ukraine left Oleksandr Vikhruk without both arms and his right leg. Maksym Radiuk lost his left arm, his eyesight and was badly burned. Now, through pain and sweat, Oleksandr, 45, works with US doctors to one day go fishing using prosthetic limbs. Maksym, 23, hopes the treatment will make him fit to join Ukraine's national football team for the blind. As the world awaits what promises to be the first direct negotiations Thursday in Turkey between Moscow and Kyiv since the early months of the Russian invasion in 2022, the two badly injured Ukrainian soldiers being treated at an elite US military hospital outside Washington embody the tremendous cost of the war for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen and their families. "It's very painful, very scary to see your husband maimed," Oleksandr's wife Olha, 50, said, choking back tears. "I couldn't speak without tears. I couldn't live. For three months, I didn't speak to almost anybody, except the kids." She added: "It's a terrible, horrible war. I cannot describe it." - 'I imagined the sea' - Oleksandr was wounded in March 2023, when his infantry unit was ambushed by Russian drones in the eastern Donetsk region. Gravely wounded, Oleksandr applied tourniquets to his arms and leg, but had to wait 10 hours to get medical help because the evacuation route was under attack by Russian forces. "When I was in a lot of pain, I simply thought about something pleasant: my home, my wife, my children," Oleksandr, wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt and sitting in a wheelchair in the office of United Help Ukraine, a charity that covered the families' non-medical expenses during treatment. As hours passed, Oleksandr's body started shivering violently and he thought back to the time when he visited Marseille in southern France. "I imagined the sea and I started feeling warm. I plunged into my dreams, that's how I was able to endure it," Oleksandr said in a weak voice, his eyes reflecting the traumatic memories. When he was finally taken to hospital, his arms and leg had to be amputated and he spent 2.5 months in a medical coma. Later, he also suffered a cardiac arrest and a stroke -- doctors said it was a miracle he survived. Olha was devastated, but eventually seeing how Oleksandr's eyes would light up when he saw her entering his intensive care unit gave her strength. "You begin to get used to this pain, to the idea that you must go on living, that life continues," said Olha, a soft-spoken brunette, also clad in a Ukrainian shirt. "We fought together," she added. "I would tell him, Sasha, you will live, I believe in you, we are together, we will get through this. And we did." - One eye, one arm - In April 2024, Maksym's territorial defense unit was serving in the southern Kherson region, when a Russian drone exploded near his face. It destroyed his right eye, blew off his left arm and several fingers and set him on fire. Because of the shock, Maksym initially didn't feel any pain as he waited to be evacuated, but his legs were so badly burnt that it felt like he was wearing shorts. "I completely dissociated and just sat and waited and didn't think about anything," Maksym recalled, wearing sunglasses and sitting in a wheelchair. Maksym spent one and a half months in a medically induced coma after doctors amputated the remains of his arm. His wounds were so severe that his mother Natalia, 40, herself a servicewoman, was told that Maksym was unlikely to survive. When Maksym finally came to, he couldn't see. "He woke up and he asked me: how many eyes? I told him: one," said Natalia, adding that initially there was hope to save his left eye. "How many arms? I said: one. And legs? I said: two." Natalia, who brims with energy, said she only allowed herself a couple of hours to cry. "I decided that I will not help my child this way, that I need to pull myself together and move forward, forward, forward," she recalled. "I will do everything so that he can return to normal life and he will show people with arms and legs and eyes what he can do." - 'Rise up and scream' - The soldiers are scheduled to spend six months to a year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as part of a treatment plan paid for by the US Department of Defense. Both should receive bionic limbs, and doctors have also offered to transplant one of Maxym's toes onto his right hand. "I am very grateful that we were welcomed here in America, in this superb hospital, by superb professionals. They are great, they treat our guys very well, they treat them as heroes," said Natalia. But with the talks scheduled in Turkey, the families hold out little hope for any fair and lasting peace deal with Moscow and called on the international community to do more to support Ukraine. "Everybody must rise up and scream that this war needs to be stopped," she added. md/sms
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rally in DC Saturday to mark 3 year anniversary of Russia-Ukraine war
The Brief Ukrainian activists are expected to gather at the Lincoln Memorial in DC on Saturday afternoon. The rally, organized by the Ukrainian community, marks the third anniversary of Russia's war against Ukraine. WASHINGTON - Ukrainian activists and supporters are planning to gather Saturday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial for a rally to mark three years of the Russia-Ukraine war. What we know The event starts at 1:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Memorial, with speakers expected to begin around 2:00 p.m. A march will follow the rally at the Lincoln Memorial at 3:30 p.m. The march will begin at the Lincoln Memorial and end at the Russian Ambassador's Residence. The rally and march are being organized by US Ukrainian Activists, United Help Ukraine, Razom for Ukraine, Ukraine House, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, and People of Ukraine Foundation, and in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukrain and the Honorary Consulate of Ukraine, according to the Facebook event. The backstory Russia's army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Putin sought to justify by falsely saying it was needed to protect Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO. But Russia's aggression against Ukraine didn't start then. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw signs that Ukraine was pulling away from Russia's sphere of influence, seeking alliances with western European nations. Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and started an armed aggression in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that grew into a long-running conflict that left thousands dead. That conflict simmered until 2022, when Putin ordered what he called military exercises along Ukraine's borders. He told the world that the roughly 150,000 soldiers that he had amassed would not be used to invade Ukraine. But in the early hours of Feb. 24, Russia launched widespread airstrikes and soldiers began pouring over the border. Why you should care President Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, causing outrage and alarm in a country that has spent nearly three years fighting back a much larger Russian military. Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "a dictator without elections" and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom.
