The soldiers, still outfitted in camo, arrived not by cargo plane or armoured carrier but by wheelchair, and formed up before a crowd bearing flags, flowers and the traditional loaves of bread.
There were handshakes, hugs and song — the Ukrainian national anthem, of course — and a few photos, but no long-winded speeches or squandered minutes.
This was the arrivals area of the Minneapolis International Airport, far from home. These soldiers had a lot to get done and not much time to do it.
Thirteen months ago, the Russian attack on Ukraine had barely begun when Serhii Lukashchuk got the early morning call.
“They said, ‘The war has started,’ so I put on my uniform and went to the front lines,” he said.
It was his second tour in the Ukrainian army, but just weeks after arriving in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, he stepped on a land mine, losing his right leg below the knee and part of his left foot.
Surgery followed, and still more surgery. “And then I was in America,” he said.
Lukashchuk, 30, was part of the seventh group of Ukrainian amputees to find their way to the Protez Foundation rehabilitation clinic in Oakdale, Minnesota, where they were being fitted with new limbs.
Another soldier, Mykola Filonenko, sought help from the clinic at the urging of his sister after he lost his legs fighting in the region of Kharkiv. Roman Hryhorian, who lost a leg and an arm in the city of Bakhmut, got a tip about it from someone at the Ukrainian health ministry.
Years of hostilities with Russia and its proxies have forced Ukraine to become skilled in the art of replacing limbs, but with full-scale war in its second year, the need has become too great for Ukraine’s medical workers alone. So since last summer, Protez, a nonprofit, has been taking in Ukrainians who have lost limbs.
By this month, almost 800 Ukrainians had signed up for help, said Dr Yakov Gradinar, chief medical officer at Protez. So far, the clinic has equipped almost 60 people, most of them soldiers, with prosthetic devices.
“The biggest part of their success has been their determination,” said Gradinar, who spent his early childhood in Ukraine.
All of the men photographed for this article volunteered for the military after Russia attacked.
“That just shows their drive,” he said.
Protez, which is about 15 miles east of Minneapolis, is not like many other prosthetic clinics, which may work with amputees for months, fitting the prosthetic devices, doing physical therapy and teaching them how to use their new limbs.
Minnesota has a big Ukrainian community, and many people have volunteered to help at the clinic and put the soldiers up in their homes.
One of the volunteers, Toly Dzyuba, said he and his wife were consumed by anger in the early months of the war and desperate to offer meaningful help.
“It is incredible to witness the transformation that happens during the three to four weeks of rehab,” Dzyuba said. “These soldiers arrive in their wheelchairs with a broken spirit, with missing limbs. Their lives got crippled — you can see it all in their eyes.
“Within two to three days, they are able to stand and make their first baby steps. Then they can walk.”
Hryhorian said he was lucky just to be alive. He and three other soldiers were in Bakhmut, the eastern city where fighting has raged for months, unloading a truck filled with ammunition, grenades and mines. They spotted a Russian reconnaissance drone above them. The drone had spotted them, too.
Soon, they were being hit by artillery fire.
Two of the men escaped unhurt. The third was wounded. Hryhorian, 40, lost his right arm and right leg, and ended up in Minnesota in January being fitted for new ones.
— The New York Times
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