Bohdan Petrenko, 21, whom I met when he was practicing walking on his artificial leg, also plans to rejoin his military unit as soon as he fully recovers from the mortar wounds that took off his leg and shattered his arms. Petrenko said that he would return to the front as a radio operator or drone operator.
Petrenko had a crush on a girl in his hometown before the war, but had never dared to ask her out, and when fighting broke out, she evacuated to Poland. On a return trip to Ukraine to visit his parents, she heard that he was injured and while passing through Lviv she stopped to visit him in the hospital.
“She never left,” he added. “She’s still here. She’s magical.”
They now live together, he said, adding: “Someone can have all their arms and legs and still not succeed in love, but an amputee can win a heart.”
The West surely should do a better job of providing Ukraine with the F-16s, tanks and long-range missiles it needs to end this war. But what may matter even more than weaponry is the value of Ukraine’s determination to win, even with prosthetic legs.
War amputees are stoic to their challenges, having lost friends and feeling lucky by that standard. “After the amputation, I didn’t feel so bad,” reflected Yevhen Tiurin, 30, with a smile. “The problems in my leg were now over.”
The nurse who attended him, Olha Baranych, was impressed. “Something clicked in my heart,” she recalled. They got married and are expecting their first child in August.
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