An artillery shell should have killed Andrii Smolenskyi in May. Instead, the blast tore off both of his arms above the elbow and destroyed his eyes. Now he's fighting to put his life back together.
Andrii Smolenskyi and his wife, Alina Smolenska, on May 26, 2022. Andrii never wanted to be a soldier. But when Russia invaded Ukraine last year, he refused to flee Kyiv and instead stayed to defend his country.This story includes images and descriptions of war injuries that some readers might find disturbing."The whole mission was just a dream," he thought to himself as he lay in bed.
"He doesn't have his arms. He doesn't have his eyes. And we [don't] know what will be in [the] future right now," Alina recalls one of the soldiers telling her.It's a miracle that Andrii survived the blast that took his arms and eyes. Unfortunately, with no telling when the war will end, there's little that can be done in Ukraine to try to make him whole again.Alina and Andrii sit outside a hospital on June 25.
And with casualties mounting, Ukraine just can't handle that many patients. Olena Nikolaienko, president of Future for Ukraine U.S.A. and the head of strategy and development for Future for Ukraine International, says the country used to treat approximately 3,000 new amputees every year, but the current volume of soldiers in need is overloading the health care system.
"Losing an arm or a leg, or multiple arms and multiple legs, can be a great loss," Vandersea said."You go through similar feelings as if you lost a loved one, you know? You're losing a part of your body, so you go through the five stages of loss and grieving, depression, etc. And it's important to try to make these individuals whole."
The program has already provided care for 15 of the 24 patients it plans to help this year. And though the program obviously has a major impact on the patients it's helping, it's not nearly enough considering how many people are in need, Vandersea said. And funding is falling short. As for Andrii's eyes, some of his doctors have put it to the couple plainly — he will never see again. But others remain optimistic, Alina says, because they believe the retinal nerves may have survived the blast.
"I wanted to protect what I had lost," Andrii says."I feel a lot of compassion for all the people that live in my country. ... We all feel united that we just fight for what we love, for our country." The fact that he survived and with the injuries he sustained is nothing short of astounding considering the destructive power of an artillery round.
"I believed that he [could] hear me, I believed that he could feel that I'm near him, and I believed — I knew — that it was important for him to know that I'm near him," she said.
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Love, war and loss: How one soldier in Ukraine hopes to be made whole againAn artillery shell should have killed Andrii Smolenskyi in May. Instead, the blast tore off both of his arms above the elbow and destroyed his eyes. Now he's fighting to put his life back together.
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