Ukraine: “I don’t just want to get around. I want to walk properly again”

They would have to walk one and a half kilometres under shelling and drones to reach a safer place. After five hundred metres, they needed shelter from drones and found a house with a basement. It was equipped with a heating stove and sleeping areas from previous occupants.

“I walked through the basement, wanting to have a look at what was inside. A moment later, I heard a loud explosion. I fell to the ground. I looked down — my foot had almost been blown off.”

Oleksandr crawled out of the house on his stomach. “I must have crawled about 400 metres, and then mum and I heard the drones flying again.” Nearby was a burnt house, with a cellar, the only place below ground level where they could take shelter. 

When the drones flew over, we went down into the cellar and spent the night there. We didn’t even have anything to bandage my leg with. It was nothing short of a miracle that I survived until morning. The whole cellar was covered in my blood.”

The next morning, his mother ran for help. A few locals came with a bicycle – the only transport available. “They put me on the bike and that was how we got to the basement of another building where people were living.” 

Oleksandr was eventually evacuated. With his leg bandaged in a sheet and in agony that even painkillers could not numb, he was taken to Kharkiv, where his leg was amputated below the knee. To this day, Oleksandr does not know what he stepped on in that basement.