Let's help a defender with a leg amputation

"I am a citizen of Slovakia. At the beginning of this year, I came to Ukraine. I felt that I couldn’t stand aside while a war was taking the lives of people who had never asked for this suffering. I used to work as a dispatcher in Austria. My life was peaceful, but something inside was calling me. I wanted to be close to those fighting for freedom. I wanted to help in the way I knew how.

My call sign is ARTUR. It was easier for the guys to use, and eventually, it became natural for me too. Now, it feels like a second skin. I serve in the 25th Airborne Brigade as a drone operator. On the Pokrovsk front, we saw everything: mud, fog, enemy movements, cold, exhaustion. And the sense that your work truly matters.

That day, I was returning from a reconnaissance mission. It was almost silent. You know, the kind of silence that puts you on edge. One step… and a black void. A mine, most likely dropped from an enemy drone. A sharp pop – then the world tilted. I realized it immediately… my legs… they were gone. But I stayed conscious. I was breathing, trying not to think too much.

While I was lying there, I did everything I could. I applied tourniquets. Checked where the blood was coming from, whether there were shrapnel wounds. I held on, even though my hands barely obeyed me. Then the guys from our position arrived – carefully, quickly, with the kind of movements that only come when you’ve saved your comrades hundreds of times before. They double-checked everything, calmed me down, and I… I was most afraid that someone else might get hurt because of me. Thank God, everyone made it out alive.

I wasn’t evacuated until the following day. I stayed conscious the entire time. Only in the hospital did I learn the full extent of my injuries: both legs amputated above the knee. My left hand was damaged. Shrapnel wounds. A chain of surgeries. Long nights. Slow mornings.

But life didn’t end. It just became different.

Now I’m waiting for my stumps to fully heal and beginning the path of rehabilitation. I have to learn how to move in a wheelchair, strengthen my muscles, regain control of my body. And start preparing for prosthetics. The goal is to stand again. I want to return to working with drones in the army to remain useful. I dream of staying close to the people I came here for.

I need rehabilitation at the Western Rehabilitation and Sports Center of the NCSIU. Without it, the road to prosthetics is simply impossible.

The center’s specialists explained the plan to me. The first month is for healing the stumps. In the second month, they’ll shape them, bind them, treat the scar tissue, and adapt them to axial loads. It’s a delicate and complex process. In the third month, I’ll be able to begin working with prosthetists. Whether it will be specialists from Lviv, Kharkiv, or the ones recommended to me in Dnipro – it’s hard to say now. It all depends on how my body responds to the initial stages. But there is a plan. It’s ambitious. And absolutely necessary.

To begin this journey, I need support. Rehabilitation will take no less than three months. It’s expensive. But this is my chance to regain movement, life, work, and meaning".