Editor’s Note: Ukraine’s Heroes is a Kyiv Post project devoted to Ukrainian army heroes injured in Russia’s war against the nation. Periodically we will tell the stories of these wounded warriors, many of whom need money for treatment, surgeries and prosthesis. At least 955 soldiers have been killed and 3,322 injured in the war so far.
A 22-year-old man lies in a hospital bed and smiles, pointing at his foot in a steel brace. “Look, just look! I can move it now. It is a miracle, I have no ligaments but I can move it,” he says. Denys Holodiuk was a professional soldier with the 95th Airmobile Brigade from Zhytomyr.
His unit was sent to the country’s east in April to defend Ukraine against Russia’s war.
Holodniuk was injured in a skirmish near Semenivka village on June 3. He spent four months in Kyiv Military Hospital and was finally sent home a few days ago. His left foot was blown up by a grenade that broke all the bones. Almost two dozen surgeries took place during his first night in a Kharkiv hospital.
“We were ordered to clean up Semenivka and fell right into a trap. Many say someone betrayed us,” Holodiuk recalls. “There were many betrayals at the time.”
Holodiuk says his brigade was sent to Donetsk Oblast’s Sloviansk before the city was liberated by the Ukrainian army early this summer.
The troops faced hostility from residents in the city of 120,000 people. “They would call us fascists in the day, blocking our way here and there, and then come back with rifles at night to shoot us, the so-called ‘peaceful’ locals,” Holodiuk says with bitterness. The soldier says he could never imagine these same people would wear blue-and-yellow and plan to build a monument for the airborne troops in the city.
Holodiuk has the flag of his brigade attached to the wall above his bed. The man says he is proud and always has been proud to be a Ukrainian army soldier.
“I loved army service. It was always fun: military trainings, skydiving,” Holodiuk says with a dreamy smile on his face. But his smile fades when he looks at his foot. The injury will not allow him to go back to his military career.
Doctors say rehabilitation will take at least a year. “My foot was in pieces. When French doctors came they advised amputation,” the man says. “But our doctors said they would fight.”
And they did fight. Holodiuk says that everyone in the hospital owes gratitude to charity givers. “You know we are soldiers. We don’t need much, we got used to the worst,” he says. “But people come and bring money and food and help and we are very grateful to them.”
If you want to offer Holodiuk any help, please contact him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/denysvdv.
