Football warriors: Ukrainian amputees get back on the ball
KYIV, Ukraine— Goalkeeper Yevgen Nazarenko laughed as he warmed up on a football pitch in Kyiv. He had been asked to stretch his hands, but he only has one.
Nearby Oleg, who has only one foot, groaned and lost balance as he did press-ups.
Both men lost limbs fighting for Ukraine.
Once or twice a week, a dozen or so amputees get together in the Ukrainian capital for football training.
Most played regularly before their injuries, now prosthetic legs are propped up on the side of the small artificial pitch in central Kyiv.
Oleg, 46, was an officer in the 46th Air Assault Brigade, which is now playing a leading role in Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the southern town of Robotyne.
But last December “a bastard shot at me with a grenade launcher attached to a rifle from about seven metres” as he fought near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
But the Russian “got scared”, Oleg told AFP, his face beaded with sweat as he gripped his crutches.
“If he had held the rifle more firmly, he would have hit me somewhere in the middle of my chest and I would not be playing here now,” he added.
‘It’s not easy to withstand’
“I’ve seen with my own eyes many guys who lost their limbs, how people just broke down, could not stand this terrible tragedy and started doing bad things, drugs or something else,” said the former policeman and father of two.
“It’s not easy to withstand this, believe me,” Oleg said.
“I remember the first time when I came to from the morphine. I lifted up the thermal blanket and looked and my foot wasn’t there... I felt like my life was over, but I’m still here,” he said smiling broadly.
Before losing his right foot, Oleg was twice wounded but returned to the fighting each time.
He even asked a doctor to give him a fake medical certificate after his second shrapnel wound, when he should have been discharged from the front line.