In Ukraine, the conflict has resulted in tens of thousands of people being maimed, changing their lives forever. To a Sky News correspondent, soldiers talk about the “hell” they went through and the difficult recovery after the loss of limbs.
“It’s coming!”
One word and Gosha’s life changes forever. The mortar explodes right next to the 30-year-old Ukrainian soldier. If his friend Vasyan hadn’t called him, the mortar would have exploded in his face. Instead it landed near his hand.
“A large amount of blood was running down my arm,” Gosha recalled.
The soldier says he was injured in early May 2022. Sixteen months later, in a small prosthetics clinic in the US, Gosha tells a story of horror and survival that reflects the reality of soldiers in Ukraine.
Official figures indicate that at least 25,000 Ukrainians have lost limbs since the beginning of the Russian invasion. It is difficult to verify the exact figures, but the injured may be much more, writes Sky News.
The number of Russian soldiers who were maimed is not known, but is also believed to be huge. Neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian authorities are willing to officially reveal the casualty figure, which reveals the cost of the war.
Thousands of amputees
“The number is not official, and some of the people have lost several limbs,” said Mike Corcoran, co-founder of the clinic.
“It’s a stadium full of amputated, human limbs”
In 18 months of war in Ukraine, the number of Ukrainian amputees is at least 10 times greater than the number of Americans mutilated in 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Corcoran points out.
Gosha is the 39th Ukrainian soldier to attend the Orthopedic and Prosthetic Medical Center near Washington. He was fitted with a carbon prosthetic arm, a Sky News correspondent wrote.
Doctors at the medical center are experts in the field of military prosthetics and have spent two decades at the world-renowned Walter Reed Medical Center treating American soldiers.
According to medics, helping soldiers today is a challenge because of the “intensity of the conflict”.
“Battlefield first aid tapes, called tourniquets, designed to be attached to the limb just above the wound to stop bleeding, are often placed too high. The bleeding is stopped, but cells in the limb are killed in the process.” , doctors from the center explain.
This also leads to irreversible consequences, they explain and add that it is necessary to remove an entire arm or leg.
“It was like a horror movie”
Gosha was wounded in the battle for the Azovstal steel plant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
The two-month siege ends on May 17, 2022, with the surrender of the last remaining Ukrainian soldiers. Gosha was among them and was taken into Russian custody. The fight is defining in its intensity and ultimately in its futility, Sky News reports.
The soldiers slept in an underground room that served as a battlefield clinic, says Gosha.
“People were lying together, side by side. They had their hands amputated and we were operated on in the same cell. There was a bag full of human limbs on the floor.”recalls Gosha.
Gosha explains how the wounded lay in a narrow room with rows of bunk beds.
After the initial amputation of his arm in the bunker using a saw. This led to repeated manipulation of his hand.
Two weeks later the steel plant was taken over by the Russians. As a prisoner of war, Gosha spent more than a month without running water and painkillers. He describes how the Russians also took the Ukrainian soldiers’ supply of bandages.
Gosha was released in a prisoner exchange. This begins a long journey that takes him to America for several weeks.
“You Can’t Say No”
The Medical Center for Orthopedics and Prosthetics does not collect fees for the treatment of Ukrainian soldiers, and prosthetics is an expensive business. A hand can cost £ 81,000 (approximately BGN 183,425 – note ed.).
Some of the Ukrainians who manage to get to the clinic do so with the help of many charities.
Mike Corcoran’s plan is to open a clinic in Ukraine. For now, he and his team are traveling to train Ukrainian residents, deliver donated equipment and support medics in the country.
Corcoran predicts that Ukraine’s amputation challenges will eventually make it a world leader in prosthetics, but he says it will take time and huge investment.
Limits on US aid
The US government has delivered billions of dollars worth of weapons as part of “security assistance packages” to Ukraine. But these packages do not allow funding of treatment or sharing of medical resources to treat wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
“The Department of Defense has not received specific requests to improve prosthetics for wounded Ukrainian servicemen,” US Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Garren Jay Garn said in a statement.
“However, several members of the Ukrainian armed forces are currently being treated at the Landstuhl (a US military medical facility in Germany). We welcome the work of various charities involved in helping Ukrainians in need of prosthetic care,” commented Garn.
Iliya Mikhalchuk is also being treated at the clinic. His story is horrifying. One of his hands was severed, and the other was damaged by an anti-tank missile. The 36-year-old man was captured by the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner.
The scars left by the Wagner group are both physical and mental, Mike says of the wounded soldier.
“He never gets out of my head”
Gosha explains how he and one of his companions were fed dog food, because that’s all they could find in the vast steel plant.
“No one wants to live in captivity. Russia will continue to terrorize, kill, capture, destroy“, the soldier commented and indicated that this is the reason why he wants to return to the front as a gun commander in the artillery.
Source: Sky News
2023-09-20 08:41:59
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